Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” host Joe Scarborough reacted to President Donald Trump’s interview a night earlier with Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly prior to the kickoff of Super Bowl LI.
In that interview, Trump was reluctant to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin and for that Scarborough insisted that Trump must come out publicly and state that he opposes assassinating journalists and political rivals, as Putin has been accused of doing in the past.
“If Donald Trump keeps being asked to criticize Vladimir Putin for assassinating journalists and Donald Trump refuses to criticize Vladimir Putin for assassinating journalists and say, ‘Well, we do it too,’ in a sense, does that suggest he thinks it’s OK to assassinate journalists?” Scarborough said. “Does that suggest he thinks it’s OK to jail political opponents? To assassinate political opponents? If you don’t condemn, after being repeatedly asked to condemn these actions, at some point you go back to the ‘he who does not deny admits’ story. And it suggested he does. I suggest somebody at the White House get him to write a statement – a very strong statement letting the world know that he condemns the assassination of journalists and political rivals because he suggests in the two interviews with O’Reilly and us that he does not.”
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