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“ “So, I want to know, from Capitol Hill police, is it just white people, or just Donald Trump supporters? Why do you scream at people for walking three blocks from the Capitol, but then Trump supporters come in and you open the f——- doors for them. You let them breach the people’s house. What is wrong with you?” ”
That was MSNBC host and former GOP lawmaker Joe Scarborough addressing the shocking breach of security on Capitol Hill yesterday, after hundreds of Trump supporters mobbed the complex and fought with police on Wednesday, leaving four people dead.
Scarborough’s fiery speech in the opening 15 minutes of “Morning Joe” early Thursday morning drew an audible gasp from one of his colleagues after the host used the F-word and other profanities on the air.
Here is an unedited version of the clip. As noted, it contains some offensive language.
Or there is a longer, edited version of Scarborough’s segment here without the profanity:
The clip quickly went viral on Twitter — in part because of the taboo obscenity (although cable networks like MSNBC are not bound by the Federal Communications Commission’s profanity policies), but also because he was posing the questions and expressing the frustrations that many people had while watching Wednesday’s violence unfold in the U.S. Capitol.
“ “If these insurrectionists were Black, they would have been shot in the face.” ”
Among the top trending topics across social media and news outlets alike on Wednesday and Thursday were questions about how such a breach of security was allowed to happen — especially after a widely-shared video clip appeared to show police officers letting the mob past barricades and into the Capitol complex.
Read:A nation asks, ‘Where were the U.S. Capitol Police?’
And many people, including Bernice King, daughter of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Joy Reid, an MSNBC anchor, pointed out the disparities between how security was mobilized around the nation’s capital ahead of Black Lives Matter protests last summer, and the police response to the Trump supporters — who appeared predominantly white — overrunning the Capitol building on Wednesday.
Reid condemned the Capitol Police response on the air Wednesday night, saying “I guarantee you if that was a Black Lives Matter protest in D.C., there would already be people shackled, arrested or dead. Shackled, arrested en masse or dead.”
Scarborough’s Thursday morning monologue touched on both of those concerns. “If these insurrectionists were Black, they would have been shot in the face,” he said. “And my god, if these insurrectionists were Muslim, they would have been sniped from the top of buildings.”
He then called for President Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and lawyer Rudy Giuliani to be arrested for insurrection against the U.S., accusing them of egging the unruly mob on. Trump had held a rally earlier on Wednesday afternoon where he called on his supporters to march to the Capitol to protest Congress certifying the Electoral College votes that officially declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Trump returned to the White House instead, and later posted a video telling the protesters that they were “very special” and “we love you,” but they needed to go home. The video was condemned by mainstream social media companies, with Facebook and Twitter temporarily blocking the president from their platforms.
Read:Re-impeach? 25th Amendment? Various ideas floated to end the Trump era now
“That’s insurrection against the United States of America, and if Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump are not arrested today for insurrection, and taken to jail and booked — and if the Capitol Hill police do not go through every video, and look at the face of every person that invaded our Capitol, and if they are not arrested and brought to justice today — then we are no longer a nation of laws,” said Scarborough, “and we only tell people they can do this again.”
The FBI is asking the public to help identify the rioters at the Capitol by submitting tips, pictures and videos.
