Americans have a moral obligation to vote against every single Republican on the ballot in 2020, a former GOP congressman argued on MSNBC on Monday.
"Deadline: White House" anchor Nicolle Wallace interviewed former Rep. David Jolly (R-FL) following a weekend of bloodshed.
"What do we do?" Wallace asked. "What do you think?"
"We focus on Donald Trump, his contribution to the national narrative, but Nicolle, I think that gives a pass to the broader Republican Party. We have to talk about that as well in this moment because it is their silence that normalized this escalation of this narrative across the country that Trump continues to reinforce," Jolly said.
"I find myself today offering the same insight I did at the night of the Parkland shooting a few hours from our home in Florida, which is this: Republicans will never do anything on gun control, nothing, ever," he said. "They won’t."
"Think about Las Vegas. They did nothing when 500 people were injured. The Pulse nightclub, 50 killed. The question for the nation was, do we allow suspected terrorists -- suspected terrorists -- to buy firearms? Republicans did nothing. Parkland, they did nothing. Emanuel AME in South Carolina, nothing. Go to Sandy Hook in Connecticut, nothing. Jewish temple in Pittsburgh, nothing. The Jewish temple in San Diego, nothing. Southerland Springs, Evangelical church in Texas, nothing. Now we have Texas, now we have Ohio in the same weekend and all we get is silence," he explained.
"I say that because if this is the issue that informs your ideology as a voter, the strength to draw in this moment is to beat Republicans, beat them. Beat every single one of them," Jolly urged. "Even the safe ones in the House, beat them. Beat them in the Senate. Take back the Senate."
"You take me away with your bluntness. But you’re not wrong. No Republican has ever been moved by any of those tragedies," Wallace replied.
"They have not," Jolly agreed. "They have not."
"The last thing I will say, Nicolle, to my former Republican colleagues and Republican voters, if you actually think the Second Amendment was envisioned to protect gun rights of this moment of national tragedy to allow carnage with weapons of war, if you actually think that’s what the Second Amendment protected, you’re fundamentally, constitutionally ignorant," he argued. "And if you know that’s not what it protects and you continue to do nothing, you’re worse than constitutionally ignorant, you’re a scoundrel."
"All I can ever think of in this moment when I see Republicans do absolutely nothing, your time is coming. My mom likes to say the wheels of justice grind slowly but they grind increasingly and exceedingly fine. That’s what has happened to a lot of Republican public careers in moments like this," Jolly added.
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