Following former president Donald Trump’s call for protests over the weekend under the presumption that he will be arrested Tuesday, New York City and the NYPD have been put on guard for protestors and potential violence in the case of an indictment from the Manhattan DA.
But for those Trump supporters who do decide to protest over the former president’s alleged hush money scandal involving adult film star Stormy Daniels, “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough issued a warning Tuesday: “It’s pretty simple: Break the law, go to jail,” adding that those who “screw with the NYPD” will get a “one-way ticket to Rikers.”
“Morning Joe” had the former secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, join the panel Tuesday to discuss the Jan. 6 protests, the string of new arrests that have been made as a result of the insurrection and now Trump’s call to protest his potential arrest.
Johnson emphasized that Jan. 6 must be viewed as an insurrection.
“There’s something to be said for investigating and possibly prosecuting not just those who took to the streets, not just those who broke into the Capitol Building, but those who incited the insurrection,” he said. “January 6 was the very definition of an insurrection. In my view, it’s in the national interest, in prosecuting these cases, we call it what it was.”
“Do you know what you call this — what we’re watching right now? It’s a technical term, so, for those of you not in television I can understand why you’ve never heard what we call this. We call this ‘video,’” Scarborough began. “We have a lot of video, and in the post-truth world that Donald Trump inhabits and his supporters inhabit and people on cable news television that want to defend him inhabit, this video is held by millions and millions of people especially because of social media.”
Scarborough then applauded the videos’ existence for showing “that it was a riot, it was an attempted insurrection, and they keep going to jail” – which is where his warning to future protesters came in.
“So for those who think they’re gonna screw with the NYPD today, stay on the other side of the bridge,” he said. “It’s not gonna go well. If they come into New York City and break the law, they’re going to jail. It’s pretty simple: Break the law, go to jail. There is no post-truth world when it comes down to the court system.”
Watch the full “Morning Joe” segment in the video above
