MSNBC's Scarborough Suggests Trump is a Democratic Plant Who Created a 'Political Virus To Tear Through the GOP'

During Monday's edition of Morning Joe, Panelist John Heilemann attempted to explain why Republicans have decided to stand behind President Trump in the midst of the government shutdown caused by a stalemate over the President's much-promised border wall: "the concern of a lot of Republicans is they can see that Trump is driving them off the cliff but they look at the short term and they fear not the general election in 2020 but they fear the potential that Trump and a Trump-backed candidate could primary them and beat them before they even got to November."  Heilemann summarized the Republican Party's support for President Trump as the result of "fear, panic, cowardice (and) stupidity" before predicting that Republicans' thinking will change when they make the calculation that "it costs them less to leave Trump than it costs them to stay with Trump." Host Joe Scarborough then tried to argue that "Donald Trump actually is a shrewd Democrat that wanted to destroy the Republican Party...he could not have created a more effective political virus to tear through the GOP and rip it to shreds."