Morning Joe took a critical view of some of the GOP campaign strategies on Monday, the day before the 2018 midterm elections, and took a harsh view of what they called blatant racist tactics by Republican candidates in a number of local races. They then revealed a remarkable admission President Donald Trump made to them in a private conversation.

The particular conversation excerpted here opened with a conversation surrounding the heated gubernatorial race in Georgia that sees Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams running neck and neck with Secretary of State Brian Kemp in a traditionally red state.

Kemp’s office recently alleged that there was a Democratic attempt to “hack” state voting polls (without citing evidence), and many political experts are alleging unfair voter suppression, particularly of African-American voters in Georgia.

NBC News National Political Reporter Heidi Przybyla noted a disturbing trend of polls tightening in many races after what she saw as the”race issue” was introduced into the political sphere.

“It is as the race issue became really prominent that the polls tightened because it was only a couple of weeks ago of that Desantis had the lead and then he made that fateful comment about monkey it up. Then we had the racism robocalls coming into the state. Then President Trump called him a thief. All of these dog whistles. What did we see? We saw the polls tightening.”

With Andrew Gillum now leading in the polls, Przybyla appears to be making the point that racial dog whistles backfired on GOP candidate Ron DeSantis.

Cut to the reaction from Joe Scarborough, who noted that Trump consistently reminds his rally goers of his pro-Charlottesville “heritage” protestor stance.

Brezizinski followed by revealing an off-camera conversation with then-candidate Trump, in which they pressed him on why he played the “birther” card so hard in challenging President Barrack Obama to show that he was in fact born in the United States (and not in Kenya.) The allegation that Obama was not a true American was viewed by many as a shameless racist play to “otherize” the first African-American president.

According to Brzezinski, Trump privately admitted that he knew it was wrong, but he did it because, “in his mind, it works.”

Watch the clip above courtesy of MSNBC.

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