MSNBC host Joe Scarborough lashed out at the Republican Party for panning former President Donald Trump behind the scenes while commending him in public.
Scarborough said he was mystified by the party’s behavior while expressing outrage over a new report claiming Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy privately told colleagues he would urge Trump to resign from office after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
“I want to go back really quickly to 2016 because how instructive is it that Kevin McCarthy actually said that he thought, seriously, he thought Donald Trump was paid off by Vladimir Putin?” Scarborough said. “I don’t understand this. I can’t even comprehend it. I’ve never seen anything like it, and yet this is how Republicans on the Hill have been acting since 2016.”
McCarthy privately told his colleagues that he would encourage Trump to resign from office following the riot, according to a New York Times report adapted from an upcoming book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future.
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McCarthy’s office shot back at the report. “McCarthy never said he’d call Trump to say he should resign,” said Mark Bednar, a spokesman for the California Republican.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also voiced support behind the scenes that Trump’s impeachment was warranted, although he later voted against conviction, according to the report. Scarborough recalled witnessing numerous Republicans come on his show and berate the president but refrain from such critiques in public.
“It’s not just this book, and I mean, the book is great reporting,” Scarborough said. “But how many times, Willie, did we have people come on the set, saying they hated Donald Trump in 2016, and yet they would speak no ill of him on-air? And then they would go out and say the most positive things at press conferences about him. We didn’t only hear that in ’16 — we heard that throughout the presidency.”
The Morning Joe co-host served as a Republican congressman for Florida’s 1st Congressional District from 1995 to 2001 but has since left the party and indicated he would likely never return amid Trump’s rise to power. Scarborough added he did not understand what happened to the party and vented about its handling of Trump.
“All of my friends, we never acted that way on the Hill,” he said. “We just didn’t do it. I’m not exactly sure how Donald Trump changed the equation for these spineless, feckless Republicans. I don’t know how Donald Trump hijacked the party and at the same time made these Republicans cower.”
Co-host Willie Geist agreed with Scarborough and echoed his sentiments, saying that Republican leaders could have opened the floodgates for more GOP congressional defections from Trump.
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“And they’d muster courage for a moment, wouldn’t they?” Geist said. “And we see that again here, and then Kevin McCarthy would hear the pushback and remember he wanted to be the speaker of the House. Mitch McConnell would muster a little bit of courage and then realize it would cost him a bunch of votes if he voted to impeach Donald Trump. And they step back because power is more important than the country.”
