Morning Joe Calls Out GOP Silence Over Paul Gosar’s Murder Fantasy Video: ‘Career Would Be Over’ Anywhere Else
Morning Joe excoriated the Republican Party’s congressional leaders for saying nothing about Representative Paul Gosar’s (R-AZ) anime depiction of himself killing his colleague, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
The video is a spoof of Attack on Titan, in which, Gosar is shown slashing Ocasio-Cortez in the back of her neck after her face was superimposed on one of the titans from the show. The video also shows Gosar preparing to attack President Joe Biden while depicting immigrants as a fearsome invading force pouring into America.
The video was fiercely condemned by Ocasio-Cortez and others, and Morning Joe was unanimously horrified as they spoke about it on Tuesday.
“I can’t even believe this is something I have to report,” Mika Brzezinski said. “I cannot believe this is a reality. I feel uncomfortable even saying it.”
Joe Scarborough took it up from there by saying that “if anyone had done this” when he used to be in Congress, “we would’ve called to censure this person, get them kicked off of their committees, possibly expel them from Congress.”
“I can’t even imagine the reaction if the most conservative or the most liberal of liberals attacked somebody else in the chamber this way,” he said. “Their career would be over.”
From there, Scarborough demanded to know why House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) haven’t said anything about Gosar’s video. Elise Jordan joined in by slamming their “wimp’s leadership” and emphasizing that a person would be fired in any other workplace for something like this. Willie Geist agreed, saying Congress “has become a collection of Twitter trolls” purely driven by their need to “own the Libs.”
The conversation went on as the panel hypothesized that Republicans are fully aware of the vitriol they gin up with their violent, threatening rhetoric toward political opponents; they just don’t care about the consequences. Scarborough eventually made his way back, though, to the “rank hypocrisy” of McCarthy, Scalise, and other GOP leaders not saying anything about Gosar’s video.
Can you imagine if AOC or Congresswoman [Ilhan] Omar said something about a Republican? If they had done the same thing, like, I am going to kill a Republican? Can you imagine? And guess what? Democrats would be apologizing. They would be apologizing and they’d consider kicking people off committees and they would be enraged. But here, from Kevin McCarthy this guy may be Speaker of the House. He’s saying nothing about threats against another member of Congress. And Secret Service, I don’t know if this matters to you or not, or maybe some of you like Donald Trump, I don’t know. But when the president of the United States is shown getting stabbed in the face, maybe you should reach out and ask a couple of questions.
Eugene Robinson strongly agreed, saying Republicans “would have trampled each other running to the microphone” if Democrats “did something like this.” He also hypothesized that McCarthy doesn’t want to alienate Gosar’s supporters and endanger his “deaf, dumb and blind ambition to become speaker, emphasis on the dumb.”
Watch above, via MSNBC.
