'They got scared': MSNBC's Claire McCaskill traces GOP's moral decline under Trump

MSNBC's Claire McCaskill on Thursday traced the Republican Party's moral decline under Donald Trump.

The former Missouri senator recalled the GOP's response to her 2012 challenger Todd Akin's comments on rape, and she told "Morning Joe" that Republicans now blithely accept far more depraved statements and behavior from their party members since Trump arrived on the scene.

"It is profiles in cowardice, it is a desire for power, trumping everything else, love of country, patriotism, integrity, character," McCaskill said. "Let me tell you a true story. You know, I think people forget what it used to be like. I had an opponent in 2012 who said that if a woman was raped, if it was a legitimate rape, she could not be impregnated. That's what he said, that's all he did. He had no other ethical transgressions, he wasn't charged with crimes, he didn't lie every day 45,000 times. That's all he said, and the reason he didn't beat me that year was not because of what he said, but it was how the Republican Party reacted. The leaders of the Republican Party rejected him because of what he had said. It was their ability to stand up and say, 'We do not accept this, what Todd Akin said, this is wrong.' They disinvited him to the Republican National Convention. They said things like, 'He does not belong in the Senate, he should not be running.' This was the presidential candidate at the time, the leaders of the Republican Party."

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"So the main difference here is not the conduct of the candidate, it is the reaction of the leaders of his party," McCaskill added. "All that would have had to happen here is for them to have stood up after Jan. 6 and stay in the place they were, which is, 'This is unacceptable, the government should take over now and prosecute this man.' Mitch McConnell said it, Lindsey Graham said it, Kevin McCarthy said it. They all said it right after it happened, but then they got scared. They just became little, lily-livered cowards and were too afraid that, somehow, they couldn't hold on to their precious office or their precious power if they stated the obvious. It is not so much what Donald Trump has done. It's the rest of the Republican Party who has elevated him and kept him elevated that has brought this upon America."

Watch the video below of at this link.

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