'This is fascism': Morning Joe draws a straight line from Jan. 6 to GOP candidate's menacing campaign ad

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough drew a straight line between the Jan. 6 insurrection and a Missouri Republican's menacing campaign ad -- and he called it "fascism."

The "Morning Joe" host denounced the attention-grabbing ad from U.S. Senate candidate Eric Greitens, who invited voters to join the "MAGA crew" and go "RINO hunting" as heavily armed men in tactical gear busted down the door to a home and invaded.

"RINO is basically, again, something stupid people call those who don't agree with them," Scarborough said, referring to the acronym for "Republicans in Name Only." "It's for moderate Republicans or Republicans who disagree with them on the insurrection. Again, here's a guy carrying a gun in with other people, and they are hunting out their political opponents. Again, this is fascism."

"I tried to bring this up, and there were a couple people being polite yesterday going, well, you know, maybe we shouldn't call it fascism, I don't know whether it is fascism -- this is fascism," he added. "It's using violence and violent imagery to basically tell people, 'Vote for me, a civil war is coming.' You know, it's -- it's where we are. It's where the Republican Party is right now. Every Republican needs to call this out unless they want fascism to continue to rise in their party."

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"We've had several examples," Scarborough added. "This is what they do. There is a Congress member, whose name I'm not going to mention, holding an AR-15 and said we had to go after 'The Squad,' then showed four Democratic congresswomen, as well, basically hunting members of Congress. We see it time and time again, and Republicans don't call it out. We see it here with the Greitens ads. I would hope Republicans would call it out, but they don't. I want to underline, again, we're talking about the rise of American fascism. You can look at Jan. 6, you can look at ads like this, you can look at the continued use of violence and imagery. You can look at Donald Trump telling his audience members to beat people up in the audience that disagree with him. It is fascism."

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