On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski argued that there is a clear trend of President Trump looking up to autocrats while holding Western and American institutions of government in contempt.
Scarborough said, “[T]he one thing we do know is, while we have a president who is trying to strip licenses from networks, or says he’s going to look into strip licensing from networks that disagree with him, something that he can’t do, or he challenges the First Amendment. He challenges the free press every single day. He attacks journalists every single day. he attacks federal judges every day. He attacks the underpinnings of our Constitution every single day. He praises dictators in China, dictators in the Philippines, tyrants — who have actually taken a country that your father believed could be the lynchpin to the new Middle East and Europe, Turkey, and has completely turned it into a despotic regime, which, actually punishes journalists more than just about any other country. Mika, it’s — the trend is unmistakable.”
He continued, “This man worships autocrats. He admires them. He admires them seizing power, and he has very little respect for whom? People that run Western-style democracies. He gets in fights with the Merkels. He gets in fights with the Macrons. He gets in fights with the Mays. He doesn’t get in fights with tyrants. And of course, you know, it speaks actually to his intentions when you hear him talking stripping licenses — broadcasting licenses from networks with whom he disagrees.”
Brzezinski responded, “I think you nailed it. The trend is unmistakable. You talk to anybody who comes from a country that isn’t built on the foundations of democracy, and they will tell you this is how it starts. I’m saying it very calmly. But this is what you look at. You look at this trend, and it is unmistakable.”
Scarborough then argued that there is a difference between the US, China, Turkey, and the Philippines, because Americans have the ability to freely organize and run for office and can “check this tide towards the sort of autocracy that Donald Trump celebrates, seemingly, every day.”
(h/t Grabien)
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett