“Morning Joe” found former President Donald Trump’s comments, in which he referred to Jan. 6 prisoners as “hostages,” “deeply offensive,” especially as Israelis are still being held captive in Gaza.
The MSNBC show played a clip of Trump from a speech on Thursday where he said: “You know what that was? That was … I call them the J6 hostages, not prisoners. I call them the hostages, what’s happened.”
“So Joe, there’s Donald Trump calling the people who attacked the United States Capitol, who beat up police officers with American flags, who desecrated the people’s house, calling them hostages,” said co-host Willie Geist.
“I just have to say, as a patriotic person, to watch the former President stand there in front of American flags, saluting a group of people who are in jail for what they did on January 6, it’s pretty repulsive,” Geist continued.
Co-host Joe Scarborough added that “if you ask the families of the four police officers who died,” in the Jan. 6 riots, “they will tell you it was those people responsible for their deaths.”
“So those people that took American flags that our servicemen and women have taken into battle for centuries, to defend freedom here and across the world,” Scarborough continued. “They used those flags as instruments of death, hoping to kill officers. And as you said, desecrated the people’s house.”
The MSNBC host said, “These are the people who tried to overthrow American democracy because they believe Donald Trump’s lies.”
“Morning Joe” was simultaneously displaying footage of the Capitol riot in which Scarborough said, “There we have police officers being attacked from all sides, having their heads crushed in doors. Police officers being taken to the ground, having bear spray used against them.”
“This is just pure evil,” the co-host said.
Scarborough also pointed out how “deeply offensive” it is that Trump has moved on to calling them hostages considering Israeli civilians are still being held captive inside the Gaza Strip by Hamas.
“Trump would call them political prisoners to now comparing them to Jews who were ripped out of their homes,” Scarborough said.
