1 in 5 Republicans believe Trump should be prosecuted: poll

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough was shocked by the results of a poll showing a majority of Americans -- including one in five Republicans -- think Donald Trump should be prosecuted.

Nearly half of Republican primary voters are also seeking a different candidate for the 2024 election.

"A clear majority of primary voters under 35 years old, 64 percent, as well as 65 percent of those with at least a college degree — a leading indicator of political preferences inside the donor class — told pollsters they would vote against Mr. Trump in a presidential primary," the New York Times reported Tuesday.

The survey about Trump's prosecution, conducted after the first week of public hearings by the House select committee, found 58 percent of Americans believe the former president should be charged with a crime for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, and the "Morning Joe" host found the results astonishing.

"You look at the number -- only 19 percent of Republicans, let's stop for a second and think about this," Scarborough said. "In this world of small margins that we play by every election, whether it was 2016 or 2020, let's just stop for a second and go, oh, wow. Only 19 percent of Republicans think he should be charged with a crime and go to jail. That's one in five Republicans."

"Now, I must say, I ran four times and won easily four times," he added. "But if one in five of my base thought I should have been charged with a crime and gone to jail, I mean, I would have gone and practiced law a lot earlier."

"Again," he continued, "this is starting to resonate, this is starting to sink in. I just -- we love to knock around Washington institutions. I'm not saying you, but all of us, we love to talk about how ineffective people in Congress or committees are.

"This committee has gotten the truth out to the American people, and even at the beginning of the summer, they're listening," he added. That's shocking to me."

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