Joe Scarborough Condemns Trump’s ‘Chilling Language’ of Betrayal in Firing AG Yates

The panel on Morning Joe talked this morning about the “frightening way” in which Trump fired acting attorney general Sally Yates yesterday, saying “It is frightening that the Trump admin. actually views dissent that way.”

While Joe Scarborough speaks of the Trump “administration” we all know this means Donald Trump. And this is in keeping with other examples of how Trump and his cronies view dissent.

Watch courtesy of MSNBC:

It wasn’t that Scarborough thought Trump did not have the right to fire Yates, it was the way he did it:

“The word ‘betrayed,’ using the word betrayed for somebody, that’s frightening. That’s what an autocrat would use, whoever put that word in there.”

And this is coming from a guy who is friends with Trump, who has occasionally criticized him but by and large supports him. As for whoever, it may have been Trump or it may have been his resident Nazi, Steve Bannon. The ultimate responsibility, however, lies with Donald Trump.

Scarborough went on to say,

“There are people that can have reasonable differences without saying that, if they don’t agree with you, they’ve betrayed you. That is frightening, chilling language, whether they had a right to do this or not… But saying somebody ‘betrayed’ the Justice Department because they don’t agree with you? Take that to Venezuela, OK? We don’t really want to use that sort of language here. It’s time for you guys to grow up. It really is time for you to grow up.”

There we have it again: the charge that Trump and his administration need to grow up. Trump acts in a childishly petulant manner and he does it regularly, in reaction to almost anything that makes him unhappy, at any real or imagined criticism.

Trump is acting like an oligarch and has been since his first day. And Republicans who promised to be a check on Trump have proven to be enablers instead. We can expect more, not less autocracy going ahead.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.