‘Morning Joe’: Republicans Are ‘Parroting Russian Propaganda’ Because They Know Trump Is Guilty

Ahead of Wednesday’s impeachment hearings, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough discussed Republicans’ defense of President Donald Trump with national security expert Tom Nichols. Both men are former members of the Republican Party who have become harsh critics of Trump.

“Tom Nichols, boy, what a party we used to belong to,” Scarborough said. “You’ve got the Republicans spent all weekend pushing Russian propaganda talking points that the Intel community warned them not to. Trump’s Intel community, by the way. You’ve got the top Republican on the Intel Committee in the middle of this so-called, quote, drug deal calling around indicted Ukrainians who were trying to get things happening behind the scenes.”

“As part of — again, just a part of this bigger drug deal, and of course you’ve got a Republican leader that’s running the House of Representatives in Kevin McCarthy who told his caucus before Donald Trump was nominated that he was certain that Donald Trump was being paid off by Vladimir Putin, now they just line up line the quislings that they are and do whatever this man asks them to do.”

Nichols pointed out that if the Democrats hadn’t won the 2018 midterms, none of this information would have come to light. He went on to say that everybody, including Republicans, knows the truth about Trump.

“The Republicans are going to go to the mattresses not because they believe Donald Trump is innocent but because they believe it is a partisan imperative to save Donald Trump from impeachment,” Nichols said.

“It’s not like they don’t know what happened. Everybody knows exactly what happened. I think Adam Schiff was absolutely right yesterday to say we have more than enough information to send this on to Judiciary. We’re gonna find out more things. Investigations are going to go on, but it’s just going to be more rocks on the scale of proving what we already know, which is that the President put his interests above the national interest to pressure an ally into doing his personal bidding. No matter how many ways you try and put that back together, that’s what it amounts to.”

“You know, Mika, Tom really laid it out perfectly,” Scarborough said. “The Republicans are not acting this way, not parroting Russian propaganda because they think Donald Trump is innocent. They’re doing it because they know he’s guilty.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.