MSNBC morning show host Joe Scarborough has called out President Donald Trump for rhetoric that could incite acts of domestic terrorism, according to a piece in Huffington Post . What precipitated the broadside against the president was the arrest of a U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant who is accused of plotting a domestic terror attack.
Scarborough said that he believes that Trump fully understands “what actions his words will lead to and what it will encourage.”
“There were times when you talked to him and he seemed weirdly pleased that his supporters would beat up other people in the audience,” Scarborough said. “[It] was deeply disturbing, and we saw it.”
The Coast Guard lieutenant, Christopher Paul Hasson, is alleged to have ties to white supremacist groups. He reportedly had a list of media figures and Democratic lawmakers he was researching with an eye toward perpetrating an attack – a list that included the co-host of Morning Joe . And Scarborough laid Hasson’s plot directly at the feet of the president, blaming what he termed Trump’s use of “Stalinist phrases like ‘enemies of the people’ that only tyrants have used in the past.”
Scarborough was referencing Trump’s tweet on Wednesday in which he called The New York Times a “true enemy of the people” in reference to reporting the paper of record had done on what it called Trump’s “two-year war on the investigations encircling him.”
The New York Times reporting is false. They are a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 20, 2019
“He writes that in the morning,” Scarborough said, “and in the afternoon we have this conspiracy to actually kill top Democratic lawmakers who oppose Donald Trump and journalists who dare to report the truth about Donald Trump.”
Hasson, who was identified by federal prosecutors in court filings as a domestic terrorist, wrote of counteracting “the liberalist/globalist ideology,” and establishing a “white homeland.” He also wrote that “much blood will have to be spilled to get whitey off the couch.”
Prosecutors also allege that Hasson had been researching specific targets to strike against, including Joe Scarborough. They say that Hasson searched for such terms as “where is morning joe filmed” after viewing a Scarborough piece that called Trump the “worst ever.” He also searched for “where do most senators live” and researched other ostensibly left-leaning media figures like Chris Hayes and Don Lemon.
“This is pretty simple,” Scarborough said on his show. “It’s all on the president’s shoulders. It’s all the president’s fault,” he added. “And he sits there with his mouth shut, for once in his life, doesn’t say anything, doesn’t tweet anything, which, of course, makes it even more on him.”