On today’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough ripped as “repulsive” Sean Hannity’s “bromance” with Julian Assange, and more generally criticized the Republican change of heart on Wikileaks. Background on the evolution of Hannity’s views on Assange here [note: from Daily Beast.]
Scarborough noted that when Wikileaks divulged information about a CIA operation some years ago, Assange became the Republican “enemy #1.” In 2010, Donald Trump himself tweeted that WikiLeaks was “disgraceful” and that there “should be death penalty or something.”
Scarborough argued that Republicans are being “stupid” by making the mistake of imagining that the person who gets elected president will be there forever. He predicted that unless Republicans “aggressively go after” the issue of hacking and WikiLeaks, “this is going to end badly!”
John Heilemann speculated that some Republicans are loath to criticize WikiLeaks for fear of getting “on the wrong side of Donald Trump.”
JOE SCARBOROUGH: I want to talk more generally, though, Jon, about just how stupid Republicans look. The same Republicans who, like me, were offended when there were leaks about a CIA program back in 2005, 2006, maybe it was, that actually revealed the location of black sites, exposed our allies. I was just beyond myself. I still am just absolutely stunned that the Washington Post printed that. And Wikileaks, Julian Assange was enemy number one.JOHN HEILEMANN: For Donald Trump, among others.JOE: For the Republican party. I saw a tweet from Donald Trump. For every Republican. And now they’re sitting there, like, Sean Hannity is, there’s a bromance there. It’s repulsive.The Republican party can’t make the mistake that every party makes and think the person elected in the White House is going to be there forever. Republicans are looking like fools unless they come out strongly on this and everybody forgets: there’s another election in two years! And it usually turns ugly when you play as stupid as this. Republicans need to be unified. Donald Trump needs to get on board. They need to aggressively go after this and investigate it because I’ll say it again, I’ve been saying it for weeks — this is going to end badly!
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