Morning Joe panel denounces GOP as ‘weird’ and ‘absolutely crazy’ over QAnon and ‘testicle tanning’

Comments come as far-right embraces campaign to smear every Democrat as a pedophile

Hosts of the MSNBC morning show Morning Joe as well as political commentator James Carville weighed in on the evolving state of the GOP on Wednesday as the Republican Party’s right wing backs further away from engaging honestly with American politics.

Co-host Joe Scarborough on Wednesday analysed the latest attempt by a Republican politician to baselessly smear one of her political opponents as a child groomer, apparently for the sole reason of fundraising for a reelection campaign. The Democrat who defended herself on Michigan’s state Senate floor, Mallory McMorrow, was a guest later on Wednesday’s show.

The tactic, while not yet embraced by GOP leadership, is spreading through the party like wildfire and has already been used on Capitol Hill by figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene to attack Democrats and even a handful of Republicans who joined with their rivals to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.

"The Republican Party, and James points it out, the Republican Party, the conservative movement – crazy, absolutely crazy, what they've been allowing extremists to do since Donald Trump came there," said Mr Scarborough on Tuesday.

He added of Mitch McConnell and other Republicans who have remained silent while members of their own caucus like Mitt Romney have faced the smear: “If you don't speak out against it and you're a Republican, then you're endorsing it, for the most part.”

A day earlier, during an interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber, Mr Carville held nothing back, blaming Trump voters for turning the White House into a home for conspiracies and generally unserious people for four years.

“They are a weird political party. They need to be branded as such,” said the former strategist, before making a reference to a segment aired by Fox Nation host Tucker Carlson looking at unproven treatments for raising testosterone in men. “These are people that talk about testicle tanning.”

“Look at Peter Navarro. That guy was a serious person in the White House! You’re telling me he was a normal human being?” Mr Carville went on to quip, referring to the ex-trade adviser who now faces a subpoena for his efforts to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election.

Their remarks come as the conservative fascination with “groomers”, or adults who form relationships with minors for sexual purposes, has reached a fever pitch and is resulting in the right wing making wild, nonsense accusations about wide swaths of the Democratic Party.

While not exactly linked, the belief is almost ripped directly from the pages of the anti-Semtitic Qanon conspiracy theory, which many of these same Republican politicians have professed ignorance about or claimed that they do not support.

Complicating the issue of course are the false claims spread by Donald Trump, which have solely centered on the former president’s claims that the election was stolen from him but over the course of his presidency and two runs for office have done more than anything else to weaken trust in America’s political systems on the right.