“Morning Joe” hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough called out Donald Trump over his continued voter fraud rhetoric on Monday’s episode, saying this could be a strong indicator that the former president is losing confidence he’ll make it back to the Oval Office in November and that he’ll ultimately resort to violence if the election doesn’t end in his favor.
“Let’s be very clear that about half of Americans, little less than half of Americans want to support a man who started riots,” Scarborough said after laying out Trump’s history of inciting violence and pushing false claims that the 2020 election was rigged to give President Joe Biden a win.
“He’s doing it again,” Brzezinski chimed in, mentioning that Trump’s recent behavior is merely just a replay of his 2020 election season antics. “Not only is he sowing doubt in the election. The next step is violence to get people to protect him. See what you see. Read what you read, but actually go to somewhere where you can get real information.”
Watch the full “Morning Joe” segment in the video below.
The pair addressed the issue by first highlighting Trump’s Truth Social posts from over the weekend, in which he threatened to imprison Americans, donors and lawyers who “cheated” in the 2020 election and asserted that 20% of the mail-in ballots from Pennsylvania voters were “fraudulent.”
Scarborough went in, first pointing out that “mail-in ballots haven’t even started to be sent in yet.”
“These are the type of lies Chris Christie said he started telling in early 2020 because he thought he was going to lose,” Scarborough explained. “He said that ‘the more he realized he was going to lose in the spring of 2020, the more he started amplifying those lies’ — and he’s doing it now.”
Scarborough then directed his attention to Americans who he feels may be leaning toward supporting Trump despite being fully aware of the his “lies.”
“People go, ‘Oh, I don’t know what to believe because Donald Trump says this, but I turned on this cable news channel that’s lying for 24 hours a day on the right and they tell me that what he’s saying is the truth.’ You know what the truth is, and you deliberately choose lies,” Scarborough said. “You know where the light is and you deliberately choose the darkness, you do it deliberately, because you know and I know, 63 federal judges said there was no evidence of any fraudulent behavior, any widespread voter fraud in 2020. The United States Supreme Court time and again refused to listen because there was nothing there. The one time they did in the Pennsylvania case, the most conservative justices said, ‘Even if we respond to this case, it wouldn’t change the outcome of the election.”
He added: “Now, am I saying this because I think Trump’s ever going to change his tactics? No, he knows he’s lying. He admitted last week he was lying. He said he lost by a smidge, whatever he said. No, I’m saying this for the people that actually continue to spread his lies and know differently.”
Trump’s behavior could make for a conversation piece in his upcoming debate against Kamala Harris, which is scheduled for Tuesday on ABC. The network announced the rules last week: muted microphones when the candidate isn’t speaking, strict time limits and no audience.
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