MSNBC's Joe Scarborough apologized for starting off Monday's edition of "Morning Joe" with a lengthy condemnation of House Speaker Mike Johnson.
The speaker insisted the GOP spending bill was "not going to add to the debt" or cut Medicaid, and Scarborough said Johnson was either ignorant or lying.
"You know, he says, you can look at the Bible and figure out what type of speaker he is," Scarborough said. "I just want to give the speaker the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe he just doesn't know history and maybe he doesn't even know current events, because if he did, he would know that actually, 20 years ago or so, Congress balanced the budget four years in a row, and over the past eight years under the Trump administration, the first time passed the largest deficits, the biggest debt, the biggest budgets in history up to that point, Donald Trump's administration and the Republicans in the House of Representatives, and maybe, I don't know, maybe Mike Johnson wasn't paying attention back then, but they increased the national debt more in four years than every other Congress and every other president had in the history of the country, cumulatively."
"I'm sorry to start the show this way," Scarborough added. "I just have to, when somebody says something that is so misleading, excuse me here, so misleading, when somebody says something that misleading, you just it's very, very important that people know that this budget that Mike Johnson is trying desperately to pass will help increase the federal debt by $20 trillion over the next 10 years. Let me just say that again, Mike Johnson is desperately working to pass a budget that will increase the national debt by $20 trillion over the next 10 years."
Scarborough tried to place those figures into historical context.
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"Do you realize this country didn't even accumulate that much debt over its first 220 years of existence?" he said. "Combined together from George Washington through Barack Obama? Think about this: From George Washington's term, beginning of George Washington's term through the end of Barack Obama's term on Jan. 20, 2016, 2017. The United States of America did not increase the national debt by as much as Mike Johnson's budget increases the national debt over the next decade."
"He says he's fiscally conservative – no, he's not," Scarborough added. "He's not at all and, again, how any Republican could ever claim to be conservative and vote for a budget that adds $20 trillion to a $37 trillion debt and wrecks our economy is just beyond me."
Watch the video below or at this link.
- YouTubeyoutu.be
