Joe Scarborough Excoriates Republicans Criticizing Brittney Griner Swap: They’ll ‘Never Understand the Goodness of Americans’

Joe Scarborough excoriated Republicans criticizing WNBA star Brittney Griner criticizing the U.S. for getting her back in exchange for a notorious arms dealer.

Russia returned Griner to U.S. custody on Thursday in exchange for Viktor Bout, an arms dealer who was serving a 25-year prison sentence in the United States. Griner was arrested in Russia in February, one week before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, for having less than a gram of cannabis oil. Griner was sentenced to a 9-year term in a penal colony.

Despite the Biden administration’s efforts, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan was not included in the swap, which was reportedly reached last Thursday, as Russia reportedly was only willing to do a one-for-one deal. Whelan is serving a 16-year prison sentence on baseless charges of him being a U.S. spy.

A criticism by many on the right to the release is Griner refusing to stand for the national anthem in the aftermath of George Floyd, a black man, dying in police custody in 2020.

“Americans get it; Americans are smart enough to get it. There are people that care protesting during George Floyd, there are a lot of Americans … that didn’t really get black athletes and some white athletes kneeling during the national anthem, they didn’t like it, they didn’t understand,” said Scarborough during Morning Joe.

“But they understood, ‘I’m white, I don’t understand why they’re doing this, but this is America, right? This is part of America.’ You don’t put somebody in a Russian labor camp and keep them there because they’re protesting on a protest that you may not understand.”

Scarborough continued:

This is a bigger point. Even Americans who didn’t understand the kneeling during the national anthem, again, there is a patience and an understanding. You remember the NFL when it happened, we heard time and again, people saying “never going to watch the NFL again, NFL ratings are down, all the right-wingers going oh, this is the end for the NFL.” I heard people saying “I will never, never watch an NFL game again.” Here we are two, three years later, NFL ratings have never been higher. The league has never been hotter.

What does that mean? That means Americans are pragmatic, they get it, okay that happened, we may not understand everything about the protests. We may not get why — but it’s because we haven’t lived that experience. Just like we haven’t lived Brittney Griner’s experience. We weren’t a black woman, we weren’t a black gay woman in Waco, Texas. We’ll never understand, right? And why do I say all of this? I say all of this to say that Americans are pragmatic. Americans understand for the most part.

And these harsh Republicans that keep using these same stupid tactics, what am I going to say, they keep losing. This doesn’t work politically. Americans don’t want leaders who hate. They don’t want leaders who divide, and Republicans under Donald Trump using this strategy, they just keep losing … and they’re going to keep losing and if they can’t celebrate an American coming home and being freed from a Russian penal colony, they will never understand the goodness of Americans.

Watch above via MSNBC.

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