‘Morning Joe’ compares Trump’s comments on Obama to ‘scumbags’ who blamed Bush for 9/11

Donald Trump appeared to connect President Barack Obama to the mass shooting in Orlando, and panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" agreed those comments should disqualify him as a presidential candidate.

Trump, who entered national politics by questioning whether Obama was born in the U.S., said the president had "something else in mind" when it came to stopping terrorist attacks.

The presumptive Republican nominee banned the Washington Post from covering his campaign after he accused the newspaper of "inaccurate coverage and reporting" on his remarks, which were broadcast Monday morning on live TV by "Fox & Friends."

"Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough compared Trump adding the Post to his list of banned news organizations to the pope prohibiting Bibles at Mass and Major League Baseball outlawing bats.

"It gets worse by the day on the campaign trail," Scarborough said.

Trump has promised to act more presidential after making one outrageous statement or another, but Scarborough said his statements about Obama were completely outrageous -- and he criticized the GOP candidate's cowardly dodge.

"Then saying, 'Well, I'll let people just try to figure out what I said,' it reminds me (of) when a lot of scumbags said that George W. Bush had something to do with 9/11," Scarborough said.

The former GOP lawmaker drew a sharp distinction between 9/11 "truthers" and Trump.

"That was on the Internet," Scarborough said. "To have the standard-bearer -- Paul Ryan's candidate, Mitch McConnell's candidate, the Republican Party's candidate, -- saying that Barack Obama may have been complicit in the killings of Americans is beyond breathtaking."

Mike Barnicle, the longtime newspaper columnist and frequent "Morning Joe" contributor, said Trump's suggestions about the president were absolutely unacceptable.

"What he said on TV early in the morning is basically a disqualifier to be president of the United States, because he accused the sitting president of the United States, Barack Obama, of a treasonous act," Barnicle said.

Scarborough pointed out that Trump went onto another TV news program and suggested that Obama was purposefully allowing terrorist attacks to occur.

"Then, when asked to clarify later in the day, he did what he always does," Scarborough said. "He refuses to clarify, so the conspiracy theorists hear the dog whistle and go to him."

Watch the entire segment posted online by MSNBC: