MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough on Tuesday reacted to Eric Greitens, the former governor of Missouri who is running for U.S. Senate, releasing an ad about going “RINO hunting.”
The ad features Greitens, a former Navy Seal, storming a house looking for “RINOs” — Republicans in name only.
Scarborough emphasized that the ad was “fascism” and urged Republicans to “call this out unless they want fascism to continue to rise in their party.”
“You have Greitens going in and kicking down a door with guns and tells everybody to follow him,” Scarborough outlined. “And RINO is basically, again … it’s what really stupid people call other Republicans who disagree with them. And by the way, stupid people pre-Trump were even calling people RINOs, and it’s for moderate Republicans or Republicans that disagree with them on the insurrection. But, again, here’s a guy carrying a gun in with other people, and they are hunting out their political opponents.”
“And again, this is fascism,” he continued. “I tried to bring this up, and there were a couple of people that were being polite yesterday going, ‘Well, you know, maybe we shouldn’t call it fascism.’ And, ‘I don’t know whether it is fascism.’ It’s fascism. This is fascism. This is using violence and violent imagery to basically tell people, ‘Vote for me. A civil war is coming.’ You know, it’s where we are. It’s where the Republican Party is right now. And every Republican needs to call this out unless they want fascism to continue to rise in their party.”
Scarborough later added, “I would hope Republicans would call this out, but they just don’t. So, again, I want to underline, again, we’re talking about the rise of American fascism. You can look at January 6. You can look at ads like this. You can look at the continued use of violence and imagery. You can look at Donald Trump telling his audience members to beat people up in the audience that disagree with him. It’s fascism.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent