Over Memorial Day Weekend, former President Donald Trump used his Truth Social platform to post video of one of his supporters angrily shouting at MSNBC's Joe Scarborough.
In the video, Scarborough is seen talking on a smartphone while a man yells at him, "He'll get rid of all you f*****g liberals. You liberals are gone when he f*****g wins. You f*****g blowjob liberals are done."
Scarborough isn't a liberal. The MSNBC host is a Never Trump conservative and a former GOP congressman, but he is — along with attorney George Conway, The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) and The Bulwark's Bill Kristol — one of Trump's most scathing critics on the right.
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In the video, Scarborough is smiling while talking on his smartphone and doesn't appear to be disturbed or shaken by the man.
But journalist Greg Sargent, in an article published by The New Republic on May 28, warns that Trump's willingness to post the video underscores his pattern of threatening the media.
"Some will give Trump the benefit of the doubt," Sargent explains. "Surely, Trump thought the video was funny. Surely, he only intended his MSNBC nemesis as the target. Surely, calling a person or group 'done' is just a figure of speech. And Scarborough doesn't appear to feel threatened by the guy in the video. He was just a crank, right?"
Sargent continues, "But the news here isn't this one man's anger at Scarborough, it's that Trump elevated it. And moments like these require context: This one should be placed alongside Trump's other recent threats, such as his vow that news organizations will be 'thoroughly scrutinized' if he wins, his promise to persecute his 'vermin'-like political foes, and his threat to prosecute a range of enemies without cause. Looked at this way, is it really a leap to suggest that Trump is broadcasting the idea that liberals should feel threatened en masse by a second Trump term?"
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Trump's threat to use the federal government to formally "investigate" the media if he defeats President Joe Biden in November, Sargent warns, have "taken a truly dangerous turn."
"Enough of the MAGA sanitization already," Sargent writes. "If Trump voters are sticking with him through all these things, we should be asking whether these factors are key drivers of some of this support — not credulously treating them as self-evidently incidental to it."
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Greg Sargent's full article for The New Republic is available at this link.
