MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough raged at Donald Trump over a video the president posted that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.
The video, which originated from a pro-Trump account on X but was reposted by the president on Truth Social, has been condemned as racist by both Democrats and Republicans.
Scarborough, like many others, took great offense to the rendering, with the topic coming up just minutes into Friday’s Morning Joe.
‘I mean, at this stage all you’re doing is hurting the Republican Party,’ Scarborough said. ‘All you’re doing is hurting your support in the center.’
‘All you’re doing is making yourself look pathetic, Republicans, for not standing up to this open racism and bigotry,’ he added.
Scarborough said that such a display would usually be disqualifying, particularly for a president.
‘Again, in normal times, [this] would end somebody’s political career that day,’ the former Florida GOP congressman fumed.
‘Every Republican in normal times would have come out and attacked this racism and this bigotry.’
‘I mean, at this stage all you’re doing is hurting the Republican Party,’ host Joe Scarborough said on Friday’s edition of Morning Joe, joined by his wife and costar Mika Brzezinski
The video, which originated from a pro-Trump account on X but was reposted by the president before being deleted late Friday morning, was widely criticized
The post also earned a rare critique from the Senate’s only black Republican, Tim Scott, who wrote on X he was ‘Praying [the video in the post] was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.
‘The President should remove it,’ the South Carolina senator added at around 9:45am.
Right-leaning pundit Pier Morgan also slammed the post as ‘racist.’
Trump has since deleted the post in question. A White House staffer erroneously made the post, according to a White House official who spoke to the Daily Mail on Friday afternoon. By that point, the clip had been up for about 12 hours.
The video showed the faces of the former president and first lady superimposed on the bodies of primates as The Tokens’ song The Lion Sleeps Tonight played in the background.
The clip also pedaled Trump’s oft-repeated claims that Democrats ‘stole’ the 2020 election, which were rejected by the Supreme Court, before cutting to the AI video.
The president has previously alleged that Obama betrayed the US by sending spies to keep tabs on his first campaign, amid accusations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
‘Trump just posted a video on Truth Social that includes a racist image of Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys. There’s no bottom,’ the Republicans Against Trump X account wrote on X.
Scarborough, 62, was also a registered Republican up until 2017, when he formally changed his affiliation to independent.
The adminstration has refused to apologize for the post, which promoted baseless claims that Democrats ‘stole’ the 2020 election and cut to the AI-edited version of the former first couple. Pictured, current First Lady Melania, Trump, Obama, and Michelle at Trump’s 2017 inauguration
‘They think Democrats are going to get angry,’ host said on Friday, before
‘It’s just- all of this stuff destroys Republican support among the very voters they need to win elections.’
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt initially defended the video in a statement sent to the Daily Mail.
‘This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.’
Trump’s video of the Obamas had been liked and reposted thousands of times before it was deleted.
