“Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough condemned former vice president Mike Pence’s decision to fight the subpoena from the special counsel investigating Donald Trump’s actions during the Jan. 6 riot, calling his argument to not tell the truth about the insurrection “preposterous.”
“They just can’t ever play it straight,” Scarborough said Thursday. “Here’s a guy who did some things very right on January the sixth, and now he’s claiming privilege that he can’t tell the truth about an insurrection that led him and secret service around him thinking they may be killed on that day?” He added that the secret service agents called home like it was 9/11 because they didn’t expect to survive attack.
Aside from calling the argument that Pence acted as President of the Senate rather than a member of the Executive Branch on Jan. 6 “preposterous,” Scarborough also suggested that it’s an argument the Supreme Court will “throw out.”
The “Morning Joe” host then likened the former vice president’s refusal to tell the truth to other Republicans who condemned the actions of Jan. 6, but ultimately loosened up on the critique of Trump should he be the Republican 2024 presidential nominee.
“At some point, you’re going to have to choose a side,” he continued. “You’re gonna have to either support American democracy or support a guy who has said that the Constitution needs to be overturned.”
Given Trump’s predisposition for trying to “overturn American democracy” and his prior movements to terminate the Constitution, Scarborough called the decision for Republicans to stop supporting Trump once and for all “really not that hard.”
“These people are just sullying their reputations for life by not standing up for what is obvious,” he said. “The defense of the Constitution, the defense of American democracy. The defense of, well, all the things they claimed to be supporting when they held up their hand and took an oath to the Constitution of the United States.”
This trend does not appear to be coming to a halt, co-host Jonathan Lemire pointed out, as Mitch McConnell, who has been a “fierce critique” of Trump since the insurrection, said just this week he would support Trump should he become the Republican nominee.
Watch the full “Morning Joe” segment in the video above.
