Trump 'freaking out' over coronavirus because he's 'diving in the polls': MSNBC's Morning Joe

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough called out President Donald Trump for adapting a fascist strategy to grapple with the political fallout from his coronavirus response.

The "Morning Joe" host said the president could not likely escape accountability for his failures that have resulted in the deaths of more than 41,000 Americans from the highly contagious virus.

"The president also, when Gov. [Andrew] Cuomo said, 'Hey, if the president is not going to lead, we'll get a consortium of governors to lead,'" Scarborough told co-host Mika Brzezinski. "You called it that moment: 'Oh, boy, watch how Trump responds.' He responded with his Mussolini strategy. He said, 'I have total power, total authority,' whatever he said that no American president has ever said before. Then, of course, he realized if he took total authority, then he would have total blame for every death that moved forward after that, in his mind. He shifted it back to the governors."

"Then, after shifting it back to the governors," Scarborough added, "he decided the next day he was going to actually try to attack the governors with these really dangerous, 'liberate Michigan, liberate Virginia' tweets, which, of course, fed into people taking military-style assault weapons, semi-automatic military-style weapons, to statehouses and carry them around."

Those alarming spectacles are only making things worse for the president politically, Scarborough said.

"So then, after that, he then responds the next day to the backlash from that by trying to praise all the governors," he said, "just so you know, and just so everybody watching knows, that obviously are concerned by those reckless protests, where people were close together, where you did have people bringing military-style weapons to statehouses, it just -- again, it's more of the same. It is not only damaging, of course, to the health and the well-being of millions and millions of senior citizens and other people with underlying health conditions, and healthy Americans, as well, it is also damaging to Donald Trump's political standing."

A recent polls shows 60 percent of Americans feared easing lockdown restrictions too soon, despite what Trump and his allies have been saying.

"Donald Trump can blabber all he wants, and people can go around and carry around guns to state capitols all they want, with 'don't tread on me' signs, but we're not talking about the British," Scarborough said. "We're talking about American doctors, we're talking about the very people [Trump] mocked when they told you in January and February that a pandemic was coming. You remember you did that, right? You remember you were saying that this was all a scam? Do you remember that? Like Boris Johnson was saying, 'I'm going to live my life.' That was you then, this is you now."

"As we're finally bending the curve, because unlike you, we all, as Americans, listened to those doctors," he added. "60 percent of Americans say, you know what? I've had moms and grandmoms, dads and granddads, and friends I know die the most hellacious, heinous death possible. We're going to keep listening to the doctors and stop listening to politicians that are freaking out because they're diving in the polls right now."