Washington lawmakers like House Speaker Paul Ryan who continue to support Donald Trump despite his words against U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel need to take their deals "off the table" unless the presumptive GOP nominee apologizes for his comments, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough demanded on Wednesday.
"[They need to say,] 'Donald, guess what, I'm not going to support you until you get your act together,'" Scarborough said on his "Morning Joe" program. "'You're acting like a bush league loser, racist, bigot. This is called art of the deal, I'm taking my deal off the table.'"
Further, said Scarborough, the lawmakers, especially Ryan, who Tuesday
condemned Trump's statements as the "textbook definition" of racism, but still said he was supporting him as being better than presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, need proof that Trump is "not a bigot."
"'Until you come to the table, the other side of the table and prove to me you're not a bigot and you don't take my party down in the ditch you don't have my endorsement and you can't use Hillary Clinton as a gun against my head,'" Scarborough told lawmakers to say to Trump.
"'I'm taking the gun away from my head, I'm putting it on the table and now it is in your hands on whether you are going to prove to the Republican Party and me personally that you're not a bigot,'" Scarborough continued.
"'Don't use Hillary Clinton as a threat against me. Don't use Hillary Clinton as an excuse, as your blank check to say racist things about people born in Indiana. No, Donald, you don't get to play it that way. I'm not scared of you and I'm not scared of the base because they are just as pissed off as me.'"
Show co-host Mika Brzezinski chimed in, saying that Ryan can't use Clinton "in your pathetic, weak kind of meandering around this problem."
"Really?" she said "You hate her so much that you'll take a racist? You hate her that much that we're going to have eight more years of the Republicans we had who said from the get-go with Obama, we just want him to fail. You're going to have more of the same. You are more of the same."
Scarborough added in that if Washington's establishment continues to "embrace the racist" to beat Clinton, they will lose to her and "destroy the party...you lose the presidency, right? And then you lose the Senate and you lose the House and then we small-government conservatives, we're screwed because you've destroyed our party because you're running scared."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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