Joe Scarborough Mocks Republicans’ Socialist Panic as He Warns Where the Real ‘Socialists’ Are

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough argued Republicans are busy warning about the rise of democratic socialists while ignoring what he called the real “socialists” in Washington, blasting the Trump administration’s “disturbing” move to seize government-owned stakes in major tech companies.

The Department of Commerce this week announced plans to provide more than $870 million in federal incentives to seven semiconductor manufacturers in exchange for minority equity stakes.

In a Wednesday blog post, the National Institute of Standards and Technology said the Commerce Department’s CHIPS Research and Development Office had signed letters of intent to award a combined $874 million in funding under the CHIPS and Science Act.

Kicking off Friday’s show on MS NOW, Scarborough said: “Let’s talk about the socialists that no one’s talking about but everybody should be talking about, because socialists are taking over some of the most important companies in America’s economy.”

As co-host Mika Brzezinski highlighted the story, noting the equity stakes, Scarborough shook his head and quipped: “Also known as socialism.”

“This is socialism. This is pre-[Margaret] Thatcher style socialism!” he exclaimed, referring to mid-20th century Britain, adding: “And the great irony, here you have Republicans, small government Republicans, running up the deficits, the biggest debt ever, crippling this country, not future generations they’re going to cripple this generation with the biggest budgets ever, the biggest spending ever, the biggest socialized schemes ever.”

Reading a tweet from the previous day in which he called the move “deeply disturbing” he pivoted to fury from Republicans at the leftism across the aisle: “They point at a radical fringe group in the Democratic Party and claim ‘oh, this is what Democrats are doing, they’re socialists’ and yet you actually have Republicans practicing socialism.”

“First, they practiced socialism with Intel, then they practiced socialism by forcing other companies to do business with the federal government, or else they’re going to get cut out, and now the same thing here!” he railed. “‘Yeah, you can be involved in the CHIPS Act, but you’ve got to engage in a little act of socialism with us and let us take over stakes in your company.’”

“This is outrageous. Every Republican, every Democrat, every small government conservative should be against this!” he said.

Watch above via MS NOW.

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