Republican lawmakers need to stand up to Donald Trump and make it clear they’ll support him, but only if he agrees to their terms, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said Wednesday.
His remarks came in the context of a broader conversation about congressional Republicans who’ve thrown in with the controversial GOP presidential candidate, even as they fight tough re-election battles.
“This is something you take care of in one town hall meeting. Call a town hall meeting. Say ‘this is why I’m not going to endorse Donald Trump until he does one, two, three.’ And you go there and explain,” Scarborough said.
GOP lawmakers don’t need to “run scared,” he said, adding that they “can go home and lead” by saying that unless Trump does “X, Y, and Z, he does not have my support.”
“Does that mean I’m supporting Hillary Clinton? No. But it does mean I’m not going to support somebody that will not only lose to Hillary Clinton but ruin the Republican Party for the next generation,” the cable host said.
Scarborough’s latest bit of advice for GOP lawmakers comes as part of his larger, more recent anti-Trump pivot. The former Florida congressman has not always been so critical of the presumed GOP nominee.
Scarborough had constant praise for the billionaire businessman during the Republican primary, and that, coupled with his well-known personal relationship with the GOP candidate, became a cause for concern for some at the network.
“Scarborough’s relationship with the Republican presidential frontrunner has become a subject of frustration among staff, and an increasingly problematic issue for the network’s top brass,” CNNMoney reported in February.
“In background discussions, NBC News and MSNBC journalists, reporters and staffers said there was widespread discomfort at the network over Scarborough’s friendship with Trump and his increasingly favorable coverage of the candidate,” the report added.
Also, it wasn’t too long ago that Scarborough ripped Republican lawmakers who criticized Trump and his supporters.
“Many of my conservative friends are sounding as arrogant and unmoored as left-wing pundits let loose on MSNBC during the Bush years,” he said in April in an op-ed for the Washington Post.
