'Blatant racism': Joe Scarborough calls out 'bigot, fascist' Trump’s attack on hush money judge

After the defense rested in Donald Trump's criminal hush money/falsified business records trial on Tuesday, May 21, the former president and presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee angrily railed against Justice Juan Merchan. And some of Trump's critics have been calling out the comments as racist.

Trump, outside a Lower Manhattan courthouse, said of Merchan, "The judge hates Donald Trump. Just take a look. Take a look at him. Take a look at where he comes from. He can't stand Donald Trump."

Merchan is originally from Bogotá, Colombia, but he has lived in the United States since the age of six and grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens.

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MSNBC's Joe Scarborough lambasted Trump for his anti-Merchan comments during a "Morning Joe" broadcast the next day, stressing that while he sees a college-educated Manhattan professional when he looks at Merchan, Trump sees someone who, in his view, does not belong in the United States.

The Never Trump conservative and former GOP congressman told a "Morning Joe" panel that included co-host Mika Brzezinski, the New York Times' Elisabeth Bumiller and Politico's Sam Stein, "It's far more than just concerning or nerve-racking. This is just open, blatant racism that has now been sort of mainstreamed into American political life…. I will tell you, this is what separates Donald Trump from, let's say — I'll just speak for myself — from me or for most Americans. I look at (Merchan) and go: Madison Avenue? Upper East Side? That's what I see when I see him. And I'm dead serious."

Scarborough continued, "Donald Trump speaks in code because he wants people to see the judge as another. Everybody is another unless their immigrant parents were from Scotland and Germany."

The "Morning Joe" host stressed, however, that while Trump's comments on Merchan's Colombian background are deeply offensive, they aren't out of character for someone who has a long history of making racist comments about non-Anglo Americans. And Scarborough was highly critical of "country club" Republicans who will vote for Trump despite his willingness to make overtly bigoted remarks.

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Scarborough told the "Morning Joe" panel, "The men's club grill at country clubs…. are perfectly fine voting for a guy who talks about vermin, a Nazi term — who also uses, sort of, the fascist slogan of 'go back to where you came from' for sitting members of Congress that don't happen to be white. And then, yesterday: 'just take a look at him.' Seriously? What is this, 1933? It still needs to be shocking to us today."

The Never Trumper also lambasted Republicans who are "actively" supporting Trump even though he makes unapologetically "fascist" statements."

Scarborough commented, "People are actively, actively choosing when they go in to vote for this guy to vote for a bigot, a fascist, a man who says he wants to be a dictator on Day 1."

Brzezinski noted that "chaos" is a prime ingredient of "fascism."

"Without going into the origins of fascism and cults," Brzezinski told her colleagues, "that's exactly how it starts. When there's chaos, there's a fire hose of this type of information. And it's too much to keep up with."

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