MSNBC host Joe Scarborough asserted that many Americans think that President Donald Trump is either a Russian agent or a "useful idiot" working for Vladimir Putin.
The comments, made by Scarborough during Monday morning's Morning Joe broadcast, came amid reports that Trump was considering going to Moscow for a military parade next year. The president said Putin "invited" him to the event and that "it's a very big deal."
"I would love to go if I could," Trump told reporters outside the White House last week. But a major barrier, he said, would be the fact that he would be right in the middle of campaigning for the 2020 election.
Scarborough said it would be a tricky situation for Trump if he attended the ceremony because of his questionable relationship with Russia. The annual parade commemorates the May 1945 allied victory over Nazi Germany.
"I'm not saying Donald Trump should go to Russia. I think—I think, though, at some point, the United States needs to recognize, in a very public way, the remarkable sacrifice the Russian people made in the defeat of Hitler, along with all of our other allies," Scarborough began.
The co-host continued: "And the fact that there are a lot of people in America who believe that Donald Trump is either an agent of Russia or at least a useful idiot."
MSNBC national security analyst Jeremy Bash argued that if Trump wants to honor Russia's involvement in defeating Germany in World War II, he should "lay a wreath" at the memorial in Washington D.C.
"He doesn't have to go be Putin's prop in a May Day parade, which is clearly just an effort by Putin to put his arm around Trump and say: 'We're working together,'" Bash said. "And how is that going for America?"
Trump has repeatedly been criticized for his affiliation with Putin especially following findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Former special counsel Robert Mueller concluded after his two-year investigation into the matter that there was a "sweeping and systematic" effort by the Russians to undermine Americans' confidence in their democracy and help Trump win the election. He also warned that they were planning to do it again in the next campaign.
At the G20 summit in Japan earlier this year, Trump called Putin a "great guy" and a "terrific person."
"He is a great guy. I think we had a really good meeting. I think he is a good person, we started discussing trade. I think we should have trade between Russia and USA, two great countries. We had a great meeting yesterday. He is a terrific person," Trump said.
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