Donald Trump and his family are setting the stage for post-election chaos with increasingly violent rhetoric, according to panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
The former president returned to Butler, Pennsylvania, to rally at the site of his first apparent assassination attempt, which he and his family baselessly blamed on Democrats, and host Joe Scarborough and his guests agreed that Trump was stoking the possibility of violence if he loses the election to Kamala Harris.
"I rarely agree with Lara Trump, but this election is about good and evil," said panelist Donny Deutsch. "She just has it reversed, where the good and evil is. The table is being set. The day after election day will be sobering, one way or the other. If Donald Trump wins, it's going to be extremely sobering. Even if Kamala Harris wins, it'll be sobering because the streets are going to be flooded. You see it, I mean, it's being set up. I don't think there's any gray areas here. For Trump to have gotten up there and say that the Democrats were responsible, when we know for a fact that the lone assassin voted for Trump before, his family had Trump signs in their backyard, is disgusting, vile and just dangerous."
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Trump was joined at the rally by tech mogul Elon Musk, who owns the social media platform X and increasingly spreads right-wing disinformation ahead of the election.
"Elon Musk I find to be like a Bond villain, one of the most dangerous characters to come along," Deutsch said. "The richest guy in the world that controls a major social media platform, to get up there and actually say Donald Trump is the one who is going to save democracy. The thought that that guy could be in Donald Trump's pocket is just terrifying."
Scarborough pointed out that it's not clear who 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, the gunman who fired a shot at Trump in July, actually voted for, although 58-year-old Ryan Routh, who has been charged with plotting another assassination attempt against him, did vote for the former president in 2016.
"I mixed them up," Deutsch said. "I'm sorry – my bad."
However, Scarborough agreed that Trump was priming his supporters to carry out violence on his behalf if he loses next month's election.
"What we have, though, here is, again, we have this vile political punchline that Donald Trump, vice president nominee [J.D. Vance], and his members were getting at," Scarborough said. "But the recurring theme about everything Donald Trump says, it's wrong. The lies we have seen over the past week, so many lies. Let's just focus in on three – lies about the 2020 election, Donald Trump continues to lie about it, J.D. Vance continues to lie about it, won't answer questions and then is chased down and says he did win. Then you have lies from so many other people, despite the fact that Republican officials in Georgia, the governor, the secretary of state, Republican officials in Pennsylvania, Republican officials in Michigan, Republican officials in Arizona, in all the swing states saying Donald Trump lost, yet, four years later, still undermining American democracy and telling all of his supporters, we got robbed."
"Then lying about dogs and cats being eaten by immigrants in Ohio, even when the governor, the Republican governor, the lifelong Republican governor, who was the Republican senator before and now is a two-term Republican governor, is saying that's a lie," Scarborough added, "and asking Vance, an Ohio senator, to stop lying about his own constituents and making their lives more dangerous. Then the lie about Democrats trying to kill Donald Trump, again, as a vile political punchline that all but invites Trump supporters to launch a civil war if he loses this campaign."
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