Joe Scarborough Announces on 'The Late Show' That He's No Longer a Republican

The 'Morning Joe' co-host said he's done with the Republican Party and is registering as an Independent.

It's no secret that Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough, who served as a Republican member of Congress from 1995 to 2001, has soured on the Republican Party. But, during a Tuesday night appearance on CBS' The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Scarborough took it one step further and announced that he's formally leaving the Party and becoming an Independent.

Scarborough and his co-host, Mika Brzezinski, were initially supportive of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, but ultimately have become more critical of him in recent months. Their feud reached a boiling point on the morning of June 29, when Trump tweeted an extremely personal attack on Brzezinski that shocked the media and political worlds.

When asked by Colbert to address the state of the Republican Party, Scarborough said it's "inexplicable," and that the GOP "betrayed their core values" even before Trump was elected in November.

"Back in the December of 2015 when Donald Trump supported a Muslim ban, I said on the air, it's very simple, it's black and white. I said I can never vote for anybody in my party that would say they would ban people because of the God they worshipped," he continued.

In a clip of the interview that aired Tuesday night, Scarborough chided Republicans for not calling out Trump during the campaign when he made a pitch for the ban and refused to completely disavow David Duke, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan.

"Time and time and time again, they turned the other way," Scarborough said of Republicans. "And they're doing the same thing now. And it's actually disgusting. And you have to ask yourself, what exactly is the Republican party willing to do? How far are they willing to go? How much of this country and our values are they willing to sell out?"

Scarborough, asked by Colbert if he's a Republican, confirmed that he is, but added, "I'm not going to be a Republican anymore. I've got to become an independent."

During Tuesday's episode, Scarborough helped to induct his co-host into the "Trump Attacked Me on Twitter" Hall of Fame and she returned the favor. The co-hosts also spoke with Colbert about Donald Trump Jr.'s emails.