'Where the hell are the Republicans?' MSNBC's Morning Joe torches GOP's continued silence on Trump and Russia

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough called out his former party for turning a blind eye to an avalanche of troubling evidence about President Donald Trump and Russia.

The "Morning Joe" host said the U.S. president appeared to be a Russian asset, and he urged Republican senators to speak out against Trump's reported desire to pull out of NATO.

"Where the hell are the Republicans?" Scarborough said. "Why aren't Republicans -- not to hit too close to home, but Ted Cruz has an opinion on everything. Where is Ted Cruz? Where is Mitch McConnell? Where is Lindsey Graham? Where are these Republican senators?"

"Where is the minority leader of the House (Rep. Kevin McCarthy), the man that Donald Trump called Steve?" Scarborough added. "Where are these leaders to say NATO, you're terribly confused if you think the United States should get out of NATO. You're terribly confused if you think that Vladimir Putin is a strong leader that we should emulate. There's always silence from my former party that should know better."

Republicans ought to be worried that the president seemed to be compromised by Russia, Scarborough said, and he said there should be little political risk in challenging Trump.

"They have to know by now, this is going to end badly," Scarborough said. "I talked to a lot of conservatives yesterday, and they all said the same thing, this ends badly. They know it by now. Don't they want to get out front and criticize a president who is acting like he's an asset of Vladimir Putin, ex-KGB agent, by denigrating the free press, by again denigrating the rule of law, by denigrating NATO, by denigrating our closest allies over the past 50, 60 years? Don't they want to get ahead of that? This ends badly for them, they know it."