Trump's 'demented' GOP allies betraying D-Day veterans who beat Nazis: MSNBC's Mika
MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski shamed Donald Trump and his Republican allies for betraying the sacrifices of D-Day veterans on the 80th anniversary of that crucial battle that defeated the Nazis.
About 200 surviving veterans of that battle, some of them now older than 100 and the rest in their late 90s, attended a ceremony along the beaches they had stormed in Normandy, establishing a foothold in Europe that ultimately led to the downfall of Nazi Germany, and the "Morning Joe" co-host condemned Republicans for risking American democracy to appease Trump.
"You know, it's hard not to think about how demented our politics are today when we look at these heroes and we ponder this moment of unimaginable magnitude," Brzezinski said. "This conversation reminded me of something I think is worth saying about the Republican leaders right now, and I say it with respect, but our democracy is a privilege. It is fragile, and it is a privilege, and Republican leaders following Donald Trump's autocratic tendencies are validating and reinforcing his violent anti-democratic ways on such a grand scale."
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"They almost remind me of sort of the entitled children of America's democracy, entitled because they don't care what it took to build it, unappreciative of the sacrifice that it took to get here and emboldened for their own advancement of power," she added. "So I hope they watch today and open their hearts to the concept of democracy rather than their own anti-democratic road to power."
Senior contributor Mike Barnicle, who has interviewed a number of D-Day veterans and written famed columns about their sacrifice, said the former president's selfishness was an insult to those who fought and died June 6, 1944, to defeat the fascists.
"That'd be wonder if it would occur, Mika, but I doubt it will, given the tenor and the tone of American politics today," Barnicle said. "We need leadership in this country. We presently have pretty good leadership, a veteran of politics, Joseph R. Biden, a man who knows what he is doing. What's happened to him? Well, he gets, you know, every day, he's 81 – he's too old to be president, get him out of there. We have the other guy running against him who absolutely just said, we heard him say it, talking about his court case, 'I went through something no one ever has gone through.'"
MSNBC ran black-and-white film footage of the invasion showing legions of young men charging the beach where thousands of them would die, and Barnicle's voice dripped with contempt as he compared their patriotism to the presumptive Republican nominee's self-pitying complaints about being held accountable by a jury.
"Look at the pictures we're showing right now, look at the pictures we're showing right now," Barnicle said. "This human being says, 'I went through something that no one has ever gone through.' We need leadership in in this country. What we don't need is people running for public office, in either party, but specifically you mentioned the Republican Party, and the Republican leader, Mr. Trump, who has made it a point to attack the fact that 12 ordinary citizens, 12 ordinary American citizens, strangers to each other, with various jobs or various religions, of various ethnic backgrounds, gathered in a room, the heart of democracy, and came one a verdict in his trial, and now it is a point of attack for him and for nearly every other Republican sycophant who follows him."
"That attack is a direct attack on our democracy," Barnicle added. "It is the modern-day version of a sneak attack on America. It is the modern-day version of attacking the fundamental progress we've made in this country and the roots of our country, which is democracy."
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