'What an idiot!' Morning Joe rips 'insanity' of red-state leader's kow-towing to Trump

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough ripped into red-state governors for making themselves look foolish by doing President Donald Trump's bidding.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee agreed to send National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., as part of the president's high-profile crime-fighting initiative, despite having several cities in his own state with higher crime rates, and the "Morning Joe" host criticized him and other Republican governors who've made the same decision.

"What an idiot," Scarborough said. "Seriously, I mean, what an idiot. You're actually going to help Washington, D.C., when you have cities that have twice the crime rate in your own state. I mean, it's the same thing Gavin Newsom is saying to speaker of the House [Mike Johnson] – 'Oh, wait, you're attacking San Francisco, San Francisco's a lot safer than Shreveport and Monroe, which is right outside your district.' What do you say? You're something like 400 times more likely to get killed in Speaker Johnson's home state of Louisiana than in, as he's probably saying now, the greatest governor in the world, Gavin Newsom's California."

"That's the insanity of this," Scarborough added, as other panelists chuckled at his reference to Newsom's tongue-in-cheek social media posts. "These red state governors sending National Guard up to D.C. when D.C. probably has a lower crime rate per capita than their home states. It's all to please President Trump, so you've got a guy, a National Guardsman from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, being called up not to protect his own state, but to go to Washington and stand outside the Lincoln Memorial. Republican governors of Texas, Ohio. Missouri all lead states with cities that have higher crime rates than Washington, as well. None of those, though, have asked for federal intervention, either."

Scarborough quoted a John Lennon lyric from his 1974 song, "Nobody Loves You (When You're Down and Out)" to bash Trump's strategy.

"It's all show biz, as John Lennon would sing in 'Nobody Loves You (When You're Down and Out),'" Scarborough said. "It's all show biz, and you see these red state governors, I mean, I could go down the list. I mean, you look per capita, whether it's Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, Louisiana, whether it's Bessemer, Alabama, whether it's Shreveport, Louisiana, whether it's Monroe, Louisiana, whether it's Little Rock, Arkansas.

"I could keep going on and on and on, but there are midsize and large American cities that are far more dangerous per capita than Washington, D.C. and these clowns of governors are actually sending National Guard troops away from their more dangerous cities to go pose in front of a Krispy Kreme donut shop in Dupont Circle."

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