‘Morning Joe’ Guest Slams Trump’s ‘Banana Republicanism’, ‘Alarming’ Inaction from House GOP

Former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt warned that the U.S. is fast becoming a banana republic and the GOP is allowing it to happen. Speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the former George W. Bush adviser criticized Republicans in Congress for their lack of action.

“You know, Steve Schmidt, because things happen so quickly it’s very easy to become numb to all of this,” host Joe Scarborough said.

“It’s easy to forget that just a month or two ago Donald Trump had his vice president go and basically steal $100,000, $200,000 from the U.S. Treasury and transfer that money directly into Trump’s Irish resort, his resort in Ireland, despite the fact it was on other side of the country from where his meetings were. We of course, we have seen the records, the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars that the United States Air Force shoveled into Donald Trump’s bank account, deciding suddenly that they were going to stop at an airport — a failing airport that was right by, once again, one of Donald Trump’s resorts so they could all go over and stay there.”

“This is, again, this is what you would expect from a third-world country whose corrupt leader decided to just steal gold from the treasury and put it into his — his personal safe in his presidential office. This is banana republic material and it is so, so sleazy.”

“It sure is,” Schmidt said. “The corruption is just unbelievable. And if you look back to the Republican convention, Joe, when we talked about it at the time, the chants of lock them up, what I said about it at the time was it was banana republicanism.”

“And the descent from the American republican into banana republic territory with all of this stuff has just been so stunningly fast and the lack of outrage by elected members of Congress properly exercising their constitutional oversight responsibilities is just alarming. And the reason that he feels empowered do this is because no-one has objected to it until now.”

“And so the behavior that we’re seeing from the President continues to worsen. It continues to worse earn because it’s been abetted by the complicity of silence from people who swear an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic.”

“And I think it’s significant that last week we saw an op-ed from the former head of the Special Operations Command, four-star retired Admiral William McRaven where he said very directly, he said the President is a threat to the American republic. As we look at the chaos he’s sewn around the world, the corruption here at home, these are alarming days as we get ready to enter voting period of the Democratic primary election process to pick the nominee who will give the country a choice between Trumpism and something better, hopefully.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.