'Not a test run': Morning Joe warns Trump fans are 'begging for a dictator'

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough shamed small-government conservatives for getting "swept up" in Donald Trump's authoritarian ambitions.

The former president has long praised dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, and the "Morning Joe" host highlighted his explicit threats to act like one if he's re-elected after apparently locking down the Republican presidential nomination.

"Well, you have in Donald Trump a guy who said he's going to terminate the Constitution," Scarborough said. "He's going to be a dictator on Day One, he would like to execute generals for not being lackeys, for treason, said he could use SEAL Team Six to execute his political opponents and not be arrested, and you go through all of this long list."

Co-host Mika Brzezinski pointed out that Trump had acted like an autocrat during his four years in the White House, and Scarborough agreed.

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"Well, and even in his presidency, the last two weeks, he said he wanted to -- he was demanding that his attorney general arrest Joe Biden and Joe Biden's family because he was behind in the polls, and he should send him to jail," Scarborough said. "You have all this happening. We talked about the Young Republicans who, unfortunately, have had their bearings, like, twisted by this, to become unrecognizable, and you look at -- I saw Vaughn Hillyard interviewing people at Trump rallies, talking about civil war, saying that if they didn't win this time, they were going to use violence. They were going to take over state legislatures, they were going to take over courts. They were going to come to Washington, they were going to take over Washington."

"This is not a test run," Scarborough added. "This is a guy that's told his followers, 'If I win, I'm going to be a dictator,' and his followers are all in. Again, how perverse that it is people I went to church with, evangelicals, a lot of them that seem to be swept up into this totalitarianism, this authoritarianism, and also small-government Republicans, Tea Party types that wanted small government. They're now begging for an autocrat, for a tyrant, for a dictator."

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