MSNBC's Morning Joe blasts Fox News for spreading racist lies about migrants and disease: 'This is Idiocracy'

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough blasted President Donald Trump and Fox News for spreading dehumanizing lies about immigrants to rally Republican voters ahead of the midterms.

Various guests on Fox News have claimed migrants slowly making their way north in Mexico are infected with diseases such as smallpox -- which was officially declared eradicated in 1980.

"This is dumbfounding," Scarborough said. "Fox News is now claiming that these migrants are so devious that they have the power to bring smallpox back to Planet Earth."

The "Morning Joe" host said the ploy was so stupid and cynical that GOP voters should be insulted, and The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg said it was aimed at Bible-reading religious conservatives.

"They're not only talking about smallpox, they're also talking about leprosy, which I think is interesting," Goldberg said. "Leprosy, of course, is the most famous disease in the Bible, and I think they are trying to actually trigger people who are Bible readers and religious people to think that, in effect, the caravan or the invasion or whatever they're calling it is bringing biblical-sized plagues to America."

"It's not unclever," Goldberg said. "I mean, it's built on falsehoods, obviously, but it's not an unclever play."

Scarborough disagreed, and called the racist campaign idiotic.

"You look at what Donald Trump is doing, you look at what Fox News is doing, this is 'Idiocracy,'" Scarborough said. "They think that their base, they think that Republicans are so stupid that they're going to believe all of this."