Scarborough Blasts ‘Goons’ at Fox News For Ripping ‘Conservative’s Conservative’ Flake

 

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough came to the defense of Sen. Jeff Flake on Wednesday, who announced that he would not be seeking re-election, and delivered a scathing rebuke of President Donald Trump on the Senate floor.

The Arizona Republican apparently reached a breaking point on Tuesday, and — in the midst of colleague Bob Corker’s all-day roasting of the president — lashed out in a historic speech against Trump’s “reckless, outrageous, and undignified behavior,” that threatens “the stability of the entire world.”

Predictably, Fox News’s primetime lineup took Flake to task for his stand against Trump, with Sean Hannity going so far as to call the Republican “pathetic.”

But on Morning Joe, Flake found a defense. After MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt pointed out the senator’s “incredibly conservative” voting record, Scarborough said the imbroglio “shows the insanity that has overtaken the Republican Party.”

“Jeff Flake, who is supposed to be this big liberal, that some goons over at Fox News — I won’t mention his name — are attacking, Jeff Flake has a 96% lifetime conservative rating.” (We assume Joe is not referring to Chris Wallace here.)

“He is the conservative’s conservative,” Scarborough continued. “He is the champion and has been his entire life of small government, of free trade. I mean, so, when Jeff Flake becomes too liberal for your party, your party is headed towards the tar pits.”

“Which is exactly what’s happening here, and we haven’t even talked about Bob Corker,” he added.

MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle called the ordeal “a slow slide of that principled conservatism, into something that resembles a dumpster fire.”

“You have pro-Trump conservatives, defending New York Democrat Donald Trump, against a 96% approval rating conservative against Jeff Flake,” Willie Geist said. “It’s turned upside-down.”

“He’s been a conservative, by the way, his whole life,” Scarborough said, “when Donald Trump was giving money to Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and giving over $100,000 a year to the DNC.”

Watch above, via MSNBC.

[image via screengrab]

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Aidan McLaughlin is the Editor in Chief of Mediaite. Send tips via email: aidan@mediaite.com. Ask for Signal. Follow him on Twitter: @aidnmclaughlin