MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski ripped House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy as “pathetic” for refusing to stand up to a newly elected congresswoman.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell denounced Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and the conspiracy theories she espouses, but the “Morning Joe” co-hosts bashed McCarthy for resisting calls to sideline the recently elected lawmaker.
“You know, Mitch McConnell talked about the crazy conspiracy theories about 9/11, JFK Jr., Sandy Hook,” Scarborough said. “He didn’t even have to touch on, although it’s been discussed before, the other horrific things she’s put on Facebook through the past years about the assassination of Nancy Pelosi, the lynching of Barack Obama, the lynching of Hillary Clinton and these other horrific actions, as well calling for violence against presidents, secretaries of state. Not violence, the killing of, the assassinations of our nation’s leaders.”
“This is untenable,” he added, “and Republicans in the House know this is untenable, and you wonder why Mitch McConnell is one of the only voices in the Senate doing this. We have to tip our hat to [Rep.] Adam Kinzinger, he is being really outspoken about that. They can meet in a phone booth inside of the House Republican caucus.”
Co-host Willie Geist agreed, saying it shouldn’t be hard to sideline a lawmaker who just arrived in Washington, D.C., with all the baggage that Greene is carrying.
“This is an easy one, which is why McConnell stepped out and said, ‘Hey, look, Kevin McCarthy, if you’re not going to say anything about a member of your caucus over on the House side,'” Geist said. “Not only does Mitch McConnell not lob bombs over to the other side of the House, he doesn’t even criticize Republicans out in the open. He may do it privately, but this was a full-throated, clear and detailed criticism of this freshman congresswoman because it’s destroying the Republican brand and it’s an easy thing to criticize. If you can’t step out and criticize all the things you laid out, then where is the party? Where is the party?”
“Democrats are moving to strip this woman of her committee assignments, they’re going to vote to do that in the next few days, but Republicans, namely Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, has scheduled a meeting with her sometime this week — ‘I’ll check in with her next week — instead of coming out publicly and saying what needs to be said to cross her, because he’s afraid of her and afraid of her voters,” Geist added. “Think about that. The minority leader in the House is afraid of this back-bench congresswoman.”
Brzezinski was disgusted.
“Yeah, that’s pathetic,” she said.