MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough scolded Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) during a Wednesday morning rant, calling for more gun control measures in the wake of Tuesday’s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
Scarborough argued that Congress was filled with “cowards” who repeatedly failed to get anything done — but he took special care to single out his “friend,” Senator Manchin, and chastise him for not pushing harder on gun reforms.
When all else fails, r̶o̶u̶n̶d̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶u̶s̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶s̶u̶s̶p̶e̶c̶t̶s̶ blame Joe Manchin … pic.twitter.com/eOcGOE6irI
— Virginia Kruta (@VAKruta) May 25, 2022
“It’s never time to talk about this, is it?” Scarborough began with a question. “They’re cowards, they’re such cowards. Of course, they don’t want to talk about it, just like January 6. Like we saw in the focus group, they want you to forget about it.”
“When was the right time to talk about 9/11? Oh, I don’t know, a year later? No I would say a pretty d*** good time to talk about 9/11 would have been on 9/11 when it was happening, on 9/12, how did this happen? On 9/13 …”
“These fools — they know exactly — these barbarians, they get on TV, and they say, oh, let’s not talk about it now,” Scarborough continued. “As five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11-year-old kids now in our schools — from Newtown to Texas — are getting gunned down by military weapons. So mutilated that their moms and dads can’t even recognize their faces? And Washington does nothing.”
Scarborough then turned his ire directly on Manchin, saying that was time for him to step up and do something.
“Do something. Joe, I’m kind of tired — we’re friends, I’m just going to tell you — your old routine about, oh, it’s always this person or that — Joe, why don’t you get out in front of something for once in five years and start talking about what you can do and instead of you can’t do?” he asked. “Because all you ever talk about is what will you can’t do.”
“You’re a Democrat that got this right, after Newtown. And you pushed with Pat Toomey. And you pushed with him on background checks. You need to do that again,” Scarborough concluded, arguing that most Americans would support additional background checks.
While Manchin has supported some gun reforms — particularly with regard to additional background checks — he has said repeatedly that he supports the second amendment and would not vote to alter or remove the filibuster. And Democrats would need Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) to support changing the filibuster because most proposed bills aimed at enacting additional gun control measures would face difficulty passing in the current evenly-divided Senate.