Morning Joe talked about Trump telling his supporters that Democrats plotted to assassinate him. He’s coming right out and saying it.
“John Heilemann, if there’s been a more dangerous, dangerous political strategy in the final month of a presidential campaign, I certainly can’t even begin to imagine when it was or what it was. Tell us just how dangerous this new territory is that Donald Trump, Vance and his family have put us as a nation,” Joe Scarborough said.
“It’s pretty dangerous, Joe. I struggle for the right superlatives. You know, this has been coming for a while, right? It’s not — this is not the first time that Donald Trump — he maybe was more direct about it this weekend than he has ever been himself. JD Vance and others in his orbit have been advancing this claim now for — well, really since the assassination attempt in Butler, it was within a few hours of the shot being taken and him being hit in the ear that the rhetoric started,” Heilemann said.
He said that was where the MAGA mind virus was created.
“It’s now — it was a while where Trump did not himself personally endorse that view. It was inevitable, I would say, that he would come to that view. Sadly inevitable.”
(Well, sure. In order for him to claim the election was stolen, the totals have to be at least in the general vicinity of a win — and I suspect his internal polls aren’t showing that. So he has to whip up his supporters with this Red Dawn fantasy.)
“You can’t listen to the things that are said this weekend and not reach the conclusion that some people, and maybe many of the most important people right now in the Republican party, are not merely campaigning on division and hatred, but are, in fact, actively rooting for and inciting a split, you know, a division in the country, as you said, there are people in the conservative ecosystem that now have been very explicit about wanting that,” he said.
“It is, I think, obvious where the Republican ticket now, what they imagine happening and what they are preparing for in the wake of a possibility that they lose this election on November 5th, and I — I’m not a very fearful person. I’m nervous about — very nervous about what that will look like.”
“I’m not a catastrophizer,” Joe Scarborough said.
“Like everybody, I’m concerned about where this country is going. This is something, as you said, has germinated for quite some time for some people. It’s not some people in the Republican party, you have the presidential candidate, vice presidential candidate, members of his family, the most popular host on the most popular right right network, suggesting this and basically calling for civil war.”
