‘Rotted to the core’: MSNBC’s Morning Joe rips Lindsey Graham and GOP for helping Trump do Russia's bidding

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough scolded congressional Republicans for helping President Donald Trump sell out U.S. foreign policy to Russia.

The "Morning Joe" host said the president's scheme to pressure Ukraine into digging up dirt on Joe Biden obviously helped his 2020 re-election campaign, but also served the interests of Russia and its president Vladimir Putin.

"Everyone goes around talking about quid pro quo, quid pro quo," Scarborough said. "Let's just make this simple: What we're talking about is the president of the United States twisting and perverting U.S. foreign policy to get dirt on a domestic political rival."

Then he explained how Trump's extortion scheme also served Putin's interests.

"Russia invaded Ukraine," Scarborough said. "It is Vladimir Putin's No. 1 goal to take over Ukraine, because when he does that, suddenly Russia is no longer Russia anymore, it's the Soviet Union again. The man that called the collapse of Soviet communism -- by the way, a scourge that killed over 30 million of its own people -- he called that the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th Century."

"He knows and Donald Trump knows if Ukraine becomes part of Russia again, it is no longer Russia, it's once again the Soviet Union," he added. "Donald Trump knows that, and that's why Donald Trump has been telling his aides, 'Well, Ukraine's not even a real country, it's really part of Russia.'"

Scarborough listed all the other times Trump has sided with Putin on foreign policy against U.S. interests.

"He is reading Vladimir Putin's talking points there, he is reading Vladimir Putin's talking points in the Middle East," Scarborough said. "He was reading Vladimir Putin's talking points in December of 2015 when he came on our show and said that the United States was every bit as morally repugnant as Russia was, that we killed a lot of people, too."

Scarborough noted that Trump's call to Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky came the day after Robert Mueller's congressional testimony failed to deliver a knockout blow on Russian election interference, and he said the timing was not coincidental.

"Donald Trump made this call right after Mueller's testimony," Scarborough said.

Scarborough zeroed in on Sen. Lindsey Graham's vehement defense of Trump's actions toward Ukraine, and said the South Carolina Republican should know better.

"It's idiocy, and it's shocking he is still the chairman of the Judiciary Committee," Scarborough said. "It shows that the Republican Party is so rotted to the core and that it, actually, it keeps getting worse every day. We keep convincing ourselves they can't degrade themselves any more, (but) they prove us wrong every day."