MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said most of the people he grew with up hate President Donald Trump, but they're voting for him anyway.
The "Morning Joe" host said they share many of his concerns about the president and his fitness for office, but he said they always offer excuses for holding their nose and voting to give him four more years.
"It's good talking to them and just saying, so why are you voting for this man?" Scarborough said. "'Well, he's a terrible guy, he's a horrible example for my kids, I'd never invite him over to the house, he's despicable -- I hate him, I just hate him,' but and then, fill in the blank, AOC or Nancy Pelosi or Bernie Sanders or regulations or tax cuts or 401(k)s, and I say, so, well, we have right now a president of the United States who is demanding that his attorney general arrest the former vice president of the United States, his chief political competitor. This is something that happens or happened in the former Soviet Union, this is something that happens still in Russia."
"This is not what soft totalitarianism looks like, this is what full blown autocracy looks like, at least if you focus on the actions of the president of the United States," Scarborough said, "and you're telling me you're more concerned about Nancy Pelosi outside of the White House than you are an autocrat inside of the White House?"
Even so, Scarborough said, those old friends insist that Trump will be good for their retirement investments -- and he challenged them to explain why the president's abuses were worth it.
"Are they saying that a man that's trying to arrest his political opponent in America two weeks before an election, are they saying that maybe they'd lose 25 percent of their 401(k) under [Joe] Biden but 20 percent under Trump, and that 5 percent is worth throwing away American democracy on a guy who claims to have unlimited powers because of Article 2?" he said. "A guy that questions the federal judiciary's independence and a guy who is trying the best he can to have his political opponent arrested two weeks before a free election, and let me remind you all, my friends and loved ones, in the United States of America."
"You know, I've heard, also, this other excuse -- the press is liberal," Scarborough continued. "So, okay, so you're voting for a guy who's trying to arrest his political opponent because you don't like what Don Lemon says on CNN? You want to appoint a man who says he has unlimited powers and can do whatever he wants to do and calls for the arrests of journalists who question him, like Jeff Mason and also, well, like me repeatedly? You're going to vote for him because Lawrence O'Donnell makes you mad, because you don't like New York Times?"
"It's, again, it really -- there is no logic to it," he added. "This is you desperately trying to justify something that you know can't really rationally be justified. I haven't even gotten to the racism, to the Muslim registry, to the president calling Hispanics breeders. I haven't even gotten to that, haven't even gotten to Charlottesville, to the president telling white supremacists to, quote, stand by. To the president talking about assassinating his political rivals with Second Amendment solutions to stop them from appointing judges to the Supreme Court. Haven't even gotten through four or five years of violent rhetoric. I haven't even talked about the president of the United States saying that he would not guarantee, repeatedly in debates, the peaceful transfer of power."
