After running a collection of video clips of Department of Homeland Security agents brutalizing and dragging away U.S. citizens in Minnesota since an ICE agent shot 37-year-old Renee Good in the face one week ago, a panel on MS NOW compared the U.S. under Donald Trump to police state Russia.
With viral videos showing ICE agents grabbing anyone they want off the streets proliferating, “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough kicked off the conversation and claimed this is not the America anyone wants, outside of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Trump advisor Stephen Miller.
"I'm just curious, as a constitutional lawyer,” he began. “I mean, I see these people being dragged in the street. I see masked people coming up demanding papers. I see a guy sitting in a gas station parking lot and ICE officers breaking the window and then dragging him out and putting their knee on his back.”
“I just –– again –– we went to law school, we practiced law, this Russia it really does,” he exclaimed. “This looks like something that you would expect in Russia, that this is happening to protesters, not suspected murderers or rapists.”
"This is what America looks like in 2025 for protesters,” he pronounced. “We always looked at what happened to the Soviet Union and looked at what happened in Putin's Russia and saw this happening to protesters. They're being taken off the streets, thinking, ‘Oh my god, how could that ever happen in society?’ And I'd always ask how could those Russian police officers do that? Well, we've got people lined up for this job to put masks on, to go in, to break people's windows and drag them out of their cars, beat up American citizens, shove them to the ground and then cuff them.”
He later added, “So these Republicans who live in a bubble, these MAGA supporters who live in a bubble and think that America is with them? No, America is not with them. America is horrified by what's been going on.”