Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough torched Trump officials and allies for their “crocodile tears” over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s joke mocking First Lady Melania Trump in a White House Correspondents’ Dinner skit days before the event was interrupted by an active shooter.

President Donald Trump accused Kimmel on Monday of making a “despicable call to violence” and called for him to be fired “immediately” by ABC after a segment on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in which the host, joking as if he were emceeing the event, said Melania Trump had the glow of an “expectant widow.”

The skit aired days before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday, which ended shortly after it began when alleged gunman Cole Allen tried to storm the event.

Kimmel’s remark sparked immediate backlash, prompting statements from both the First Lady and the president, who each urged the network to dismiss the comedian.

Kimmel aired his own response to the backlash on Monday by defending his joke as a “pretend roast,” while saying he agreed in rejecting “hateful and violent rhetoric,” then urging the first lady to “have a conversation with your husband about it.”

During Tuesday’s Morning Joe, Scarborough unloaded on officials he protested had “said absolutely nothing” when the president made past remarks:

That’s crocodile tears. You know if they would sit back and just let things take their natural course, there would be enough criticism of Kimmel from their side. But such crocodile tears from people who have sat back and said absolutely nothing when Donald Trump said the chairman of the joint chiefs should be executed for treason. When the president of the United States said Liz Cheney should be shot in the face or with a firing squad when he is also said other people should be killed or executed and put them in a position where they have to have 24-hour security. It’s happened time and time again. So again, crocodile tears there.

The host said he personally “wouldn’t have said something like that about any president,” but that Kimmel’s joke was exactly what happens at a “roast.” He said previous roasts he’s seen were “far more personal.”

He defended Kimmel’s “expectant widow” line as a routine jab at her “Autumn-Spring relationship” with the president, given their age gap. He continued:

There are always those sort of jokes. Would I have said it? No, I wouldn’t have said it. Would you have said it? No. Would Mika? No, none of us would say that. But comedians, especially at these type of events, which we weren’t having, comedians usually make those sort of jokes that make you go, ‘that’s a little tough.’ And it’s happened also with the White House Correspondents’ Dinner through the years. So again, making the joke was about his age. The joke wasn’t about anything else.

He added: “So again, the crocodile tears are a bit too much, even for those of us who would never say something like that or want anybody else to make a joke like that. But it was, at the end of the day, a joke about his age and not violent rhetoric that wasn’t violent rhetoric.”

Co-host Mika Brzezinski then steered the conversation back to Trump’s own rhetoric, accusing the president of making comments to “tear down” female reporters.

“Like I can go through the list and some of the things that this man has said, I’m sorry, are things that we would never want our children to think are OK,” she said.

Watch above via MS NOW.

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