MSNBC's Morning Joe fears US cannot survive four more years of Trump's 'fascist instincts'
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough called out President Donald Trump's "fascist instincts" and worried that democratic institutions could not survive a second term.
The "Morning Joe" host was alarmed by the president's latest racist attacks at a Pennsylvania rally, and panelist Jason Johnson said Germans warned him in 2016 that Trump reminded them of Adolf Hitler.
"I was across the ocean and had Germans saying, 'I can't believe you Americans don't see that this is coming,'" Johnson said, "and I think the most worrisome part that I have to say in all of this is, you're right, yeah, there were people who called it out, Black people, Latinos, Asians who called it out. I think it took too long for many members of the press to accept that, and people who were saying it in 2015 were sometimes called, you know, you're being hyperbolic, you're using extreme language, it won't get that bad, other people will keep him in control, and that's why we are where we are today."
Scarborough wondered what the president could do with a second four-year term.
"How long do the institutions hold up if Donald Trump is re-elected?" he said. "That's really the question here. Again, the federal judiciary has done a pretty exemplary job of holding Donald Trump's worst instincts in check. The press, the investigative corps of the press, they've done an exemplary job in many ways, as well."
"But where he breaks through these norms and where polite society is not allowed to say, this is -- he's talking the way fascists talk -- that's where there is a concern," Scarborough added. "I will say, again, I have long had faith in the institutions of this country to hold Donald Trump in check. I believe the institutions of this country have done a good job, for the most part, other than the spineless Congress, the spineless United States Senate, of holding this man in check and his worst autocratic, fascist instincts."