During Monday’s edition of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” host Joe Scarborough lambasted Donald Trump as a “useful idiot” for parroting Russia’s talking points to excuse Vladimir Putin’s atrocities in Ukraine.
While addressing the appalling war crimes committed by Russian troops against Ukrainian civilians, Scarborough tore into those spreading lies to justify Putin’s actions and compared their falsehoods to the conspiracy theories spread about the Sandy Hook school massacre.
“The parallels actually to what the most contemptible human beings in American politics do and what Vladimir Putin does on a global scale, where we’re actually talking about the killing of people, they use the same techniques, even if it is for political aims in the United States,” Scarborough said.
“They use the same contemptible techniques. I think about all of the people with newsletters on Substack,” the ‘Morning Joe’ host added before slamming Trump for defending Putin.
“I think of all of the people who spent the past five years apologizing for Vladimir Putin, whether it is Donald Trump, who said on this show in December of 2015, ‘I’ve got no problem with Vladimir Putin, he’s a strong leader, unlike Barack Obama,’ and he continues to say it. He can’t walk back what he said about this guy.”
“There are other news entertainers who can’t walk back what they’ve said about this guy, what they’ve said about Russia. There are voices in the Republican Party who can’t walk that back. It is really, really shocking just the useful idiots that Vladimir Putin has had, the useful idiots he had even after the invasion when they started pushing the propaganda, talking about the biolabs,” Scarborough said. “They’re so desperate to defend Vladimir Putin, these people who live in our country and live under the protections of our Constitution, who embrace Putin, who embrace [Viktor] Orban, who embrace illiberalism, who embrace the lie. It is so clarifying.”
“It is such a clarifying moment,” Scarborough said, “and I know Americans are seeing this and they’re going, wait a second — on a smaller level, we’re just talking politics in America — this is what Putin supporters are trying to do to American politics.”
Watch the segment below:
