News

Scarborough calls on GOP to ‘back away’ from Trump

by TheHill.com - 06/07/16 10:22 AM ET

.@JoeNBC's message to Republicans: You have to start calling Trump out today https://t.co/7ui4N1QBr3

— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) June 7, 2016

MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough on Tuesday called on Republican leaders to retract their endorsements of presumptive presidential0 nominee Donald Trump.

“You have to start calling him out today,” said Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida, adding that GOP leaders can’t allow Trump to “run roughshod over what remaining national reputation we have as a national party.”

{mosads}”You have to start calling him out and saying you’re going to retract your endorsement of him today,” Scarborough said, predicting Republicans are at risk of losing control of the Senate, House, White House and governorships on the current course.

“Republicans, call him out, back away from those endorsements, make him back down on the Muslim ban, make him back down on this racist comment that he’s made about a man born in Indiana, saying he’s incapable of being a fair judge because of where his parents were born,” he said.

Trump has engaged in an escalating battle with “Morning Joe” personalities. Last week, he blasted Scarborough’s program, saying the hosts had “lost their way.”

Scarborough has said he won’t vote for Trump if the businessman sticks by his proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States. Trump sparked new condemnation in the past several days after accusing an Indiana-born judge of bias because his parents are Mexican immigrants.

Trump on Monday reportedly rebuffed calls to move past his assertion that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is overseeing lawsuits against Trump University, has a conflict of interest because of Trump’s pledge to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump insisted late Monday that he just wanted the judge to give him a “fair shake.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has similarly called on Republicans to rethink their endorsements of Trump in light of the remarks about Curiel as well as the real estate mogul’s doubts that a Muslim judge would be fair to him, either.

Tags 2016 presidential election Donald Trump Lindsey Graham Muslim ban