Joe Scarborough Goes OFF on GOP, Brian Kilmeade For ‘Deliberately Trying to Get Americans’ to Harm IRS Agents
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough blasted the Republican Party and Fox News host Brian Kilmeade for “deliberately trying to get Americans” to harm Internal Revenue Service agents.
The GOP, Kilmeade, and his fellow Fox News hosts have blasted the $80 billion allocated under the Inflation Reduction Act to the IRS, claiming it will allow the agency to hire 87,000 more employees to conduct more audits. The Treasury Department has rejected this notion. Critics have also warned about the law enforcement capabilities of the IRS.
“Are they going to have a strike force that goes in with AK-15s already loaded, ready to shoot some small business person in Iowa with these, because I think they’re going after middle class and small business people because they think that anybody that has pass-through income is a crook, and they aren’t paying their fair share, and we’re going to go after them,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told Fox News last week.
“Democrats’ new army of 87,000 IRS agents will be coming for you — with 710,000 new audits for Americans who earn less than $75k,” tweeted House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on Aug. 9.
Do you make $75,000 or less?
Democrats’ new army of 87,000 IRS agents will be coming for you—with 710,000 new audits for Americans who earn less than $75k.
— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) August 9, 2022
Last week, Kilmeade said, “Before the IRS took it down yesterday, there was a posting on their website that listed the job requirements for a special agent’s position. The major duties require agents to ‘carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary.”
“A little like James Bond, but instead of hunting down evil maniacs, these agents hunt down and kill middle-class taxpayers that don’t pay enough?” continued Kilmeade. “It’s Joe Biden’s new army.”
On Friday’s Morning Joe, Scarborough slammed this bombastic rhetoric from the Right. He did not call out Kilmeade by name.
I know this all sounds melodramatic until you have the head of the FBI [Chris Wray] saying we’re facing unprecedented threats. People that I know, people I’ve known my entire life are texting me and talking about replacing the U.S. government. Talking about civil war. And you go, ‘What’s wrong with you?’
They say, the IRS agents are coming with AR-15s and they’re coming to our doors and they’re going to kill us. Or they’re saying the FBI is coming to raid our house and take our guns away from us.
These are the lies that have been spread not by — this is what’s so disturbing — not by back benchers. These lies have been spread by Chuck Grassley, by Kevin McCarthy, by top news hosts at Fox News. This is not Infowars. This is mainstream, pro-Trump rhetoric. And they are deliberately trying to get Americans to a position of where they’ll do harm to IRS agents.
“Can you imagine Chuck Grassley talking about the IRS having a ‘strike force,’ quote, ‘that goes in with AR-15s already loaded, ready to shoot some small-business people,’” he added. “A top Fox News host saying that the IRS is coming to, quote, ‘hunt down and kill middle-class taxpayers.’ IRS coming to hunt down and kill middle-class taxpayers.”
Watch above, via MSNBC.
