During a discussion Wednesday morning on MSNBC, co-host Joe Scarborough claimed President Donald Trump has a “blind spot” on the issue of illegal immigration and attributed the wellbeing of the nation’s entire economy to undocumented aliens.

“We have an economy, let’s face it, we have an economy that is built on illegal immigration,” Scarborough told “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski, “We have an economy that is built on that.”

“That phrase right there makes him sound more like a dictator in training.”

The discussion was based on new memos issued by the Department of Homeland Security instructing border and immigration officials to ramp up enforcement. The enforcement guidance made clear the administration’s priority targets are criminal aliens with felony convictions.

But to Scarborough even a crackdown on newcomers at the border and the deportation of criminal illegal immigrants was too much. The MSNBC co-host instead suggested blanket amnesty for all the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants currently residing in the nation.

That is why I say why don’t you just legalize it?” Scarborough quipped.

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Scarborough suggested many of the same conservatives who support Trump’s immigration position have directly benefited from illegal immigrant labor.

“But the hypocrisy,” Scarborough said, “when we had Hurricane Ivan in 2005 you couldn’t get insurance fast enough to fix up home. Guess who went up without workers’ comp. And fixed those homes?”

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Brzezinski suggested Trump has undermined the media to such a degree “that he can actually control exactly what people think.” “And that is our job,” Brzezinski claimed.

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“Well, I think that the dangerous, you know, edges here are that he is trying to undermine the media and trying to make up his own facts,” Brzezinski added.

 

 

Scarborough responded with what has become a common Trump attack line from him, arguing Trump’s attacks on the media are similar to the actions of the 20th century’s brutal dictators.

“It’s when he says the media is the ‘enemy of the people,’ where he sounds like Mussolini or Lenin,” Scarborough said, “that phrase right there makes him sound more like a dictator in training.”