Trump allies 'not delusional' – they're 'twisting reality' on purpose: Morning Joe

Rudy Giuliani continues to push election fraud lies that cost him $148 million in a defamation lawsuit and a newly filed complaint by the two election workers he defamed, and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said he was purposefully twisting reality.

The former New York City mayor doubled down on his baseless claims against Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss hours after the pair sued him again, and the "Morning Joe" host said his behavior confirmed the premise of a recent New York Times column from his friend David French.

"It's as if he read David French's column yesterday in the New York Times talking about 'MAGA Man' and what it takes to be a 'MAGA Man,'" said Scarborough. "He mentioned Rudy Giuliani as the prime example but listed Mark Meadows, Kari Lake, listed a number of other people who may have all done different things in the past, may have all had different backgrounds, different political ideologies, but the key was once they became infected by [Donald] Trump, there were two things you had to do. Again, David French wrote this before Rudy went on [Newsmax] and lied again last night. He said, No. 1, you have to lie. The key is, if you're going to follow Donald Trump, if you're going to be a part of Donald Trump's team, you've got to be a liar. You've got to bend reality to whatever Donald Trump says it's going to be."

"Then the second thing is, and he did it there, which is so funny," he added. "He just walks right into it. He does it there, just like Donald Trump, just like the rest of them, you have to be loud and angry and defiant. It's not enough to just lie."

Co-host Mika Brzezinski suggested that Giuliani was "delusionally defiant," but Scarborough disagreed.

"Not delusional, not delusional, because that suggests sort of a sense of confusion," Scarborough said. "As David French said yesterday in the New York Times in his op-ed, he knows exactly what he's doing. Rudy Giuliani knows exactly what he is doing, Donald Trump knows exactly what he is doing, Mark Meadows knows exactly what he is doing, Kari Lake knows exactly what she's doing. They all know exactly what they're doing. They had past lives, a lot of them supported Barack Obama, a lot of them like to paint themselves as [having] supported abortion rights. What they do, and what Rudy Giuliani just did there was, first, as David French said, you've got to lie. You have to twist reality. In this case, it was the biggest lie of all."

Scarborough tossed House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) into that same pile.

"Oh, my gosh, I forgot the guy in Congress," Scarborough said. "All you need to do is look at the Bible, and that's what I do. Jesus' man in Congress, the speaker of the House. what did he have to do to get to power? Liz Cheney told us, but Liz didn't have to tell us because we already knew. He embraced this guy that uses Jesus as a political shield and claims that he may be the Aaron or the Moses. What does he do? He embraces the big lie. When he's called on it, remember the first press conference, the anger, the rage, people shouting down the press for even bringing up the fact that this speaker, this guy who claims Jesus as this, like, political badge of honor, the biggest liar of all, embracing the biggest lie of all in politics."

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