Joe Scarborough: Trump Supporters ‘Are Wilfully Being Conned’

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough levied criticism at supporters of President Donald Trump on Monday, citing a recent poll that shows most Republicans think Trump is a better president than Abraham Lincoln. The Morning Joe host had little sympathy for Trump’s voters.

Scarborough was speaking with Reverend Al Sharpton.

“So, Reverend Al, let’s expand beyond the Republican Party and just talk about Republicans, registered Republicans,” Scarborough said.

“What does it say about a party that for 50 years claimed to believe like I believe, that the twilight  struggle against the Soviet Union was extraordinarily important and that the wall coming down in 1989 and democracy spreading across Europe was one of the great days of our lives?”

“What does it say that this party now, not only embraces a president, but backs a president’s and a party’s defense of this — this extortion, this rigging of the presidency in 2020 as well as the embrace of Vladimir Putin’s talking points? Politicians before Trump would have had their careers destroyed on a Sunday afternoon if they had repeated the lies that Senator Kennedy repeated yesterday on Meet the Press.”

Sharpton had some sympathy for Trump supporters and argued that they had been conned by Trump, but Scarborough wasn’t convinced they were really victims.

“But Nick Confessore, it’s a willing con,” Scarborough said. “The victims are wilfully being conned. They want to be conned. These victims, actually, in a poll that a lot of people were talking about this weekend, members of the Republican Party say that Donald Trump is a better president than Abraham Lincoln.”

“The president who saved the union versus the president who has run up the biggest debt in U.S. history, the president who has capitulated to Kim Jong-Un, the president who time and time again has put his interests ahead of the interests of the country.”

“I mean, it’s just one poll. It’s just one snapshot in time. But I can also show you other polls that show that Republican — rank and file Republicans’ approval of Vladimir Putin rose exponentially after Donald Trump became president of the United States. And in some of those polls, Republicans have better opinions of Vladimir Putin than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.