On Wednesday’s Morning Joe, MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough continued his network’s inglorious habit of portraying ICE as some sort of cartoon villain. In this case, Scarborough compared ICE to both the Soviet Union and today’s Russia under Vladimir Putin while talking beside footage of an operation at a gas station that he ignored the context of. Earlier in the segment, Morning Joe played a clip that showed part of the incident where an ICE agent clearly stated the man in the car was from Honduras and they were doing a status check. However, Scarborough didn’t seem to care. Talking with New York Times columnist David French, Scarborough declared, “And then finally, I’m just curious, as a constitutional lawyer. I mean, I see these people being dragged in the street. I see masked people coming up demanding papers. I see a guy sitting in a gas station parking lot, and ICE officers breaking the window and then dragging him out and putting their knee on his back. I just, again, this—we went to law school. We practiced law. This looks like Russia.”     Portraying the man as a simple protestor, Scarborough continued, “It really does. This looks like something that you would expect in Russia. That protesters—this is happening to protesters, not suspected murderers or rapists. This is what America looks like in 2025 for protesters.” Scarborough also claimed that “We always looked at what happened to the Soviet Union and looked at what happened in Putin's Russia and saw this happening to protesters there being taken off the streets, thinking, ‘My god, how could that ever happen in society?’ And I'd always ask, how could those Russian police officers do that? Well, we've got people lined up for this job to put masks on, to go in, to break people's windows, drag them out of their cars, beat up American citizens, shove them to the ground, and then cuff them.  In response to the video going viral on social media, Homeland Security claimed the man refused multiple orders to exit his car and had a removal order dating back to 2020, which seems like information a so-called news show should have included. Here is a transcript for the January 14 show: MS NOW Morning Joe 1/14/2026 6:13 AM ET JOE SCARBOROUGH: And then finally, I’m just curious, as a constitutional lawyer. I mean, I see these people being dragged in the street. I see masked people coming up demanding papers. I see a guy sitting in a gas station parking lot, and ICE officers breaking the window and then dragging him out and putting their knee on his back. I just, again, this—we went to law school. We practiced law. This looks like Russia. It really does. This looks like something that you would expect in Russia. That protesters—this is happening to protesters, not suspected murderers or rapists. This is what America looks like in 2025 for protesters. We always looked at what happened to the Soviet Union and looked at what happened in Putin's Russia and saw this happening to protesters there being taken off the streets, thinking, “My god, how could that ever happen in society?” And I'd always ask, how could those Russian police officers do that? Well, we've got people lined up for this job to put masks on, to go in, to break people's windows, drag them out of their cars, beat up American citizens, shove them to the ground, and then cuff them.