"Tribalism" is the new word on Morning Joe, and they're flogging it ad infinitum. But there was a useful discussion about the part it plays in the Alabama senate race between Doug Jones and Roy Moore.
"Willie, you can see this tribalism over the past couple of decades and see that the impact is that it gets people voting against a candidate instead of for a candidate and you see that in these Republican events, whether it's in California where John McCain was booed by a California Republican audience or in South Florida this past weekend with the names of George W. Bush and George Herbert Walker Bush once again booed by South Florida Republicans," Scarborough said.
"Because they're not voting for people. They're just voting against the Clintons, voting against the Obamas."
Willie Geist agreed.
"This is tribalism to the extreme. This is talking about protecting a guy that's been accused by a number of women, underage women, sexual contact with them or harassment in some way," he said.
"If you're willing to protect the tribe at the cost of a 14-year-old girl, you need to re-evaluate yourself and your tribalism. We had an Alabama pastor who was out yesterday who supports Roy Moore and said something along the lines of, they must have had some sweet dreams somewhere down the line. Talking about these young women about why they would be making this up about Roy Moore.
" 'Some 14-year-olds that could pass for 20.' That's a pastor. A man of God defending the behavior of Roy Moore and basically throwing all of these women under the bus and saying they must have dreamed this up to get attention."
"Then you had somebody in a focus group who said Jesus Christ could come down from the cross and tell me that Donald Trump was involved in Russia, and I would tell him 'hold on a second, I need to ask the president if that's true," Scarborough said.
He called them 'a bizarre group of extraordinarily weak-minded people."
"Weak, pathetic sad people. who will blindly follow Donald Trump over their God in the case of that, but again, this personality cult, this is what you see at the beginning of the rise of any autocracy," he said.
"This will not happen here, but not for the lack of a lot of really stupid people who actually will choose Trump over their God, Trump over their party, Trump over their ideology, Trump over their moral patterns, Trump over everything that their mothers and fathers taught them growing up. I'm not talking about all Trump supporters, but there is a group of Trump supporters that agree like this guy, they don't care what Jesus said."
Wait, Joe. Aren't you saying there's a group of Trump supporters that are....deplorables?
