MSNBC's Joe Scarborough condemned Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) for calling for vigilante violence and torture against protesters who blocked the Golden Gate Bridge.
Demonstrators shut down the iconic bridge Monday to protest Israel's ongoing military operations in Gaza, and Cotton suggested that his fellow Arkansans would have tossed them into the water and glue their hands to the pavement, forcing them to rip off their skin to escape, and the "Morning Joe" host was disgusted by his comments.
"Police officers would be the first to say, don't do that," Scarborough said. "Cops would say, please don't do that, please don't say that. Please don't take matters into your own hands. I'll put it this way. I doubt Sen. Cotton is any more exasperated than I am when I see people doing this, blocking people who are going to work or trying to take their kids to a doctor's appointment or trying to make an airplane at O'Hare [International Airport], so they can get home in time to see a kid's ball game or a recital, or just to get home to the people they love."
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"There are ways to protest, and there's ways, I think, not to protest," he added. "This is extraordinarily counterproductive to any cause you're pushing, but here we have a guy, Tom Cotton, that went to Harvard, undergrad and law school, served in the military, who is talking about throwing people off the Golden Gate Bridge, ripping their skin off. We had a United States senator go on a network, national network, suggesting that Americans rip skin off of people's hands because they're aggravated and take matters into their own hands."
Cotton infamously called for the U.S. military to be deployed in June 2020, as protests raged across the nation over the police murder of George Floyd, and Scarborough drew a throughline between the senator's violent rhetoric and Donald Trump's authoritarian ambitions.
"This is just beyond stupid on his part, beyond dangerous on his part, to say this, and I must say, this goes -- Tom Cotton that used to be on this show, pre-Trump, would never have said something like that," Scarborough said. "Tom Cotton that we interviewed time and again on this show would have never said anything like this. This shows how violence and violent rhetoric has become normal practice in the Republican Party. These are the people who are preparing for a guy who has promised to be a dictator from Day One."
Watch the video below or at this link.
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