Among the many bombshell takeaways from the ongoing Jan. 6 committee hearings on Capitol Hill is Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony detailing former president Donald Trump’s behavior through the hours of the insurrection last year. In Monday’s episode of “Morning Joe,” co-host Joe Scarborough surmised that Trump siding with the rioters (“We love you. You are very special”), allegedly fighting with his own Secret Service personnel and more indicates a major hypocrisy within the Republican party and among those who support Trump: “Why do Republicans hate police offers?” he said.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski opened the segment by reading from a New York Times op-ed that ran on Sunday; it was written by Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell and titled “I Was Betrayed By President Trump.”
“I don’t know what part of Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony enraged me most: that Mr. Trump wanted to be driven to the Capitol to lead the vicious riot, that he’d spurred his supporters on knowing they were armed, or that he ignored some of his advisers and even his daughter who told him to call it off, allegedly fighting with his own Secret Service agent after he refused to let the president be driven there,” Gonell wrote. “Or maybe it was the fact that Mr. Trump eventually told the rioters who’d criminally assaulted my colleagues and me while trying to bring down the U.S. government: ‘Go home. We love you. You are very special.’”
Scarborough sympathized with Gonell’s confusion and anger from that day.
“It has to be so galling after these people were running around, these Republicans were running around for a year saying, ‘Blue lives matter, and we love cops. Democrats want to defund the police and don’t love cops,’” Scarborough said. “Republicans, when push comes to shove, really don’t give a damn about cops. Blue lives matter? No, not if they’re getting the hell beaten out of them and sprayed with bear spray.”
Instead, Scarborough said, Trump called the rioters – the men and women beating down Capitol police officers “to within an inch of their lives” – patriots.
“Why do Republicans hate police officers?” Scarborough continued. “Why won’t Republicans stand up for police officers and stand up for cops when they’re getting the hell beaten out of them? In Congress, they love yapping about how they support the blue when they go on the house floor, but when police officers are getting eviscerated, getting brutalized, when they’re getting beaten to death, suddenly, they love the rioters. They love the thugs. They love the people that are beating them up and beating them to death.”
Watch the video above for the full segment.
