Joe Scarborough pounded his fist on the desk in anger during a fiery exchange Thursday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe over Elon Musk’s “radically disconnected” cuts to federal spending.
The incident occurred during a discussion about President Donald Trump’s widely expected move to dismantle the Department of Education via an executive order.
Abolishing the department altogether would require congressional approval. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday afternoon that the stripped-down agency would still provide student loan and special education services.
Discussing the issue on the show, former congressman Scarborough went on a furious rant at the Trump administration, which he said plans to gutter a branch of government in the name of “cost-cutting” and “take breakfast and lunch away from poor kids” but not “take tax cuts away from billionaires.”
“The people that are running it, they’re billionaires, and they’re disconnected. I mean, Elon Musk is so radically disconnected,” Scarborough said. “He doesn’t… Ask Elon Musk. So how does this work when you let Florida or Utah or Ohio run education?”
“If you had asked [former Florida Gov.] Jeb Bush, how does it work? Jeb would say: ‘Well, here’s what we’re doing in Florida.’ If you ask [former Massachusetts Gov.] Mitt Romney, how would you use this money? He’d say, ‘This is what we’d do.’ George Voinovich in Ohio… That’s just a different age. That’s a different century."
Scarborough continued: “What we’re seeing with Elon Musk is cuts by chainsaw. There is no method to the madness. It’s just cut first and hurt Americans later. That’s what’s happening.
“And by the way, as the biggest budget hawk of anybody you certainly see in Washington D.C., because I was there when we balanced the budget four years in a row, these cuts will not do anything to balance the budget if you’re not willing to say no to tax cuts for billionaires and corporations, if you’re not willing to cut at the Pentagon, if you’re not willing to look at wealthier Americans with Social Security and start talking about means testing. Millionaires needing Social Security? Billionaires needing Social—come on, it’s ridiculous!
“But they’re not going to talk about that. They’re going to go after food programs for poor kids. They’re going to take breakfast and lunch away from poor kids. But they will not take tax cuts away from billionaires.”
Finishing his rant, Scarborough took aim at the Democrats for their failure to effectively oppose Trump, banging his fist on the table as he said: “If you’re the Democratic Party… I just got to say, if you’re the Democratic Party and you can’t win, you know, please go sell used cars because you’re in the wrong business.”
