MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on Friday said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was “un-American” for saying this week that pardons for January 6 rioters or even Donald Trump would be on the table at the “front-end” of his term if he were to be elected president.

On a podcast after officially declaring his candidacy in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, DeSantis was asked about whether January 6 defendants “deserve to have their cases examined” or even whether he’d consider a pardon for Trump over the January 6th riots.

DeSantis said it’s clear government has been “weaponized,” and added: “What I’m going to do is I’m going to do on day one, I will have folks that will get together and look at all these cases, who people are victims of weaponization or political targeting, and we will be aggressive in issuing pardons.”

“We will use the pardon power, and I will do that at the front end,” he said to Clay Travis and Buck Sexton. “We’re going to find examples where government’s been weaponized against disfavored groups and we will apply relief as appropriate, but it will be done on a case-by-case basis.”

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the host and guests Peter Baker of the New York Times, MSNBC legal analyst Charles Coleman, political analyst Susan Del Percio, and host Jen Psaki, formerly of the Joe Biden administration, expressed their outrage over the comments from DeSantis as well as those of ex-president Trump on January 6 pardons.

Scarborough said that “talking about” such pardons is “sick.”

“If the DOJ does their job to protect Americans, they start talking about defunding the DOJ and actually issuing pardons for the rioters and the seditionists,” he said of the remarks. “That is sick! It is un-American!”

Scarborough added that this view won’t get Republicans’ votes in the 2024 election, “thank God.”

And by the way, again, as we say all the time: if somebody commits a crime, if Hunter Biden committed a crime, he should be arrested. He really should. And if there were riots that went on on the edges of the BLM marches, those people should have been arrested. As Peter Baker said, 10,000 were. And on this program, when I saw people in 2020 laying siege to a federal courthouse in Portland, throwing firecrackers and other things, smoke bombs at that courthouse, breaking windows, I said, why aren’t they being arrested? It’s very interesting.

Republicans think, I guess, they’re above the law? The law doesn’t apply to them. They can try to overthrow a government, a presidential election. And if the DOJ does their job to protect Americans they start talking about defunding the DOJ and actually issuing pardons for the rioters and the seditionists. That is sick! It is un-American! And that ain’t going to win elections in 2024. It’s just not, thank God.

Watch the clip above, via MSNBC.

The post ‘It’s Sick!’ Joe Scarborough Calls DeSantis ‘Un-American’ For Saying He’d Consider Pardoning Jan 6 Rioters first appeared on Mediaite.

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