MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said the newly revealed texts between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows were among the most disturbing things he's ever encountered.
The communications showed the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas plotting with the White House chief of staff to overturn Donald Trump's election loss, using right-wing conspiracy theories and religious terminology to justify their efforts, and the "Morning Joe" host said he was shocked and appalled.
"I must say, spending a good deal of my adult life in the conservative community in Washington, D.C., this is one of the most disturbing things I have read," Scarborough said. "I can't believe I am saying this, through the entire Trump presidency and what we found out after the Trump presidency, for three reasons."
"First of all, spouses do their own work, they can do whatever they want to do," he continued. "Clarence Thomas does not tell his wife what to do and vice versa, and we can make that assumption, but Thomas on her own, Ginni Thomas on her own, has been a pillar of Washington, D.C.'s conservative community. She's revered and celebrated. The who's who of Washington, D.C. looks upon this woman as a leader of the conservative movement. It tells you how deeply corrupted and intellectually flawed that movement became through the Trump years. Ginni Thomas, I must say on a personal note, when I knew her serving in the House of Representatives, she was always an apologist for the Republican establishment. She always carried the water for the Republican establishment, and she's maintained those ties throughout her time in Washington, D.C. so Ginni Thomas is representative of where the Republican Party has gone over the past 25, 30 years. That's frightening enough, reading these text messages."
"Secondly, you have the chief of staff of the president of the United States actually, actually summoning the name of Jesus Christ," Scarborough said. "Think about the sickness of this. He summons the name of Jesus Christ for his help in overturning American democracy. Now, you could call it what you want to call it, but if you are trying to throw out a presidential election because you lost, that's overthrowing American democracy. He says he will make it the fight of his life with the help of Jesus Christ to overturn American democracy. See, here's the thing about Mark when he was trying to undermine American democracy, he said this is a fight of good vs. evil, but it's a frame of mind after reading the story last night, he's right -- it was a fight between good and evil. He just got the jerseys mixed up. He was not on the side of good, using Jesus Christ's name to spread lies, to spread conspiracy theories? I'm telling you that's a level of sickness I never thought I would see from my old party."
"The third thing, yes, it is shocking about this, that Clarence Thomas, when he had a case that came before him that he knew his wife would be associated with, didn't recuse himself," Scarborough added. "He was the lone dissenter to stop these text messages from coming out, and we have been told, by the way, that Clarence Thomas is in good health and he's going to be fine and he recovered from treatment, and we are grateful for that and we look forward to him coming back on the court sometime very soon. What he did here, shocking. Any judge -- he said before the work of spouses can be separated out and should be separated out, and they are independent actors except when they are not."
"Here this is where their work comes together, and I would say the fact that Clarence Thomas did not recuse himself and the fact that he did not recuse himself and the fact that the president's chief of staff after a presidential election that everybody knows he lost, including Mark Meadows, he says he will make it the fight of his life with the help of Jesus Christ, the king of kings, the lord of lords, to overturn American democracy," Scarborough concluded. "This is really sick stuff, and it really does show just the depths to which these people were willing to go to try and attack American democracy and throw out what Donald Trump's own people said was the cleanest presidential election in American history."
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