'Pure evil': Morning Joe hosts slam Trump's 'repulsive' defense of Jan. 6 rioters

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist slammed Donald Trump as "repulsive" for comparing Jan. 6 rioters to Israelis kidnapped by Hamas terrorists.

The former president opened his rally Thursday night in Houston with a recording of "The Star-Spangled Banner" performed by a male prison choir he referred to as “hostages, not prisoners," and the "Morning Joe" co-hosts were disgusted by the former president's defense of his supporters who were convicted of attacking law enforcement officers in an effort to overthrow the government.

"There's Donald Trump calling the people who attacked the United States Capitol, who beat up police officers with American flags, who desecrated the people's house, calling them hostages," Geist said. "I just have to say, as a patriotic person, to watch the president of the United States, the former president, stand there in front of American flags saluting, saluting a group, that group of people who are in jail for what they did Jan. 6, it's repulsive."

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Scarborough agreed, saying the families of four police officers who died as a result of the riot blamed those Trump supporters for their deaths.

"It was those people that took American flags that our servicemen and women have taken into battle for centuries to defend freedom here and across the world, they used those flags as instruments of death, hoping to kill officers," Scarborough said. "As you said, desecrated the people's house and tried to overthrow democracy because they believed Donald Trump's lies. There we have police officers being attacked from all sides, having their heads crushed in doors, police officers taken to the ground, having bear spray used against them. This is just pure evil."

"Speaking of that, how deeply offensive that Donald Trump has proved from calling these people, these thugs, he's done from calling them political prisoners to now comparing them to Jews who were ripped out of their homes," Scarborough added. "Believe you me, there was no mistake – Jews ripped out of their homes on [Oct. 7], beaten up, bludgeoned, grandmothers thrown on the back of pickup trucks and taken underground by Hamas terrorists, and they're the hostages. The world [is] talking about the hostages, and Donald Trump uses this time to compare those thugs that were beating up police officers with American flags, to compare them to Jews who were tripped from their their homes, raped, beaten, so many killed, but also so many taken to underground tunnels by a terrorist organization."

Watch the video below or at this link.

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