MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, self-described 'small gov’t conservative,' says GOP needs to be 'destroyed'

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, despite curiously describing himself as a "small government conservative," said recently that he hopes the Republican Party gets "destroyed."

What did he say?

"I'll just lay it out," Scarborough said during an interview with hosts Saagar Enjeti and Marshall Kosloff for the Realignment podcast. "I hope this Republican Party has no future. I hope it's destroyed."

The "Morning Joe" host — who served in Congress as a Republican in the 1990s before becoming a TV personality — grew increasingly hostile toward the party following the election of President Donald Trump. As an outspoken Trump critic, Scarborough fittingly pinned most of the blame for his animosity for the GOP on Trump's sway over the party.

"Donald Trump is a racist. He's a bigot, he's fascist and my Republican friends and I can still call them friends. I can have friends that I disagree with politically, but my Republican friends that I used to work with have remained silent through the racism, through the fascism, through the breaching of constitutional norms," he said on the podcast. "I hope they go the way the Whig party. And I, I don't think they deserve anything more than a complete and total collapse."

Scarborough, who was on the podcast to promote his new book and discuss the future of the GOP, reiterated his feelings shortly after, adding, "I want the party to die."

What else?

Interestingly, Scarborough condemned the GOP as racist and fascist and deserving of destruction while simultaneously calling for the two parties to work together. When Kosloff pressed Scarborough on the apparent inconsistency, the MSNBC host briefly acknowledged the point before reverting back to bashing Republicans.

"You got to make that calculation and get to [51 votes] any way you can, but I guess because I am a Republican, I was a Republican, I guess I hold my own side to a higher level. And what this Republican Party has proven is what I spent my entire life trying to disprove, that Republicans weren't racists, that Republicans weren't hard-hearted when it came to taking care of poor people, that Republicans weren't anti-immigrant and all of these things," he argued.

"This Republican Party under Donald Trump, they've actually proven that every horrible thing that liberals have said about the Republican Party over the past 25 years are true," he added.

"How do you sit down, how do you find a middle ground with a political party that is trying to throw out 150 million votes and disregard an election?" he asked. "They are either anti-democracy or they are post-democracy. I don't know what you call it, but they don't deserve to survive."

(H/T: The Federalist)