On a Tuesday episode of the MSNBC show “Morning Joe,” co-host Joe Scarborough ripped into some Republicans for pushing a comparison of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who recently died in detention, to Donald Trump. The extension of the idea is a comparison of the supposed troubles facing Trump to the oppression doled out by Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s regime, under which Navalny was detained.
“This is an attack on America that we’ve seen Donald Trump participating in since he came on our show in December of 2015 saying that American leaders were just as bad as Vladimir Putin, who openly kills opponents,” Scarborough said, discussing the trends in Trump’s corner of the GOP. The host added: “To compare America to Russia is so grotesque. To compare Trump to Navalny — Trump, who flies around in a 757, who lives in a golden skyscraper, who lives in Mar-a-Lago.”
Trump himself made the comparison, remarking publicly on Navalny’s death just to immediately veer into complaints about his own troubles. “The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country,” Trump claimed on Truth Social, adding: “Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION!”
So much of the Trump-aligned GOP’s campaign messaging hinges on deriding the U.S. It’s not just about a policy disagreement in so much of what Trump is generally talking about.
Whether maligning New York City, Washington, D.C., Georgia’s Fulton County, or one of the locales where Trump’s corner has falsely alleged election fraud, the trend is consistent. Some even absurdly describe the current crop of Democrats as “Communists,” which completely misses its definition. Trump, who currently faces four active criminal cases, has had access to the same procedural protections established for individuals subject to the justice system as, generally speaking, everybody else. One Trump case was put almost entirely on hold while he’s pursued ramshackle legal arguments at higher levels of the judiciary! That’s not the mark of something rigged against the ex-president.
