Joe Scarborough of MSNBC thinks that “Trump Republicans” cannot “lecture” embattled Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) or anyone else on the issue of race because they are steeped in “hypocrisy” for supporting President Donald Trump.
It’s safe to say that Northam had a terrible week last week. The governor first became embroiled in controversy when he supported a late-term abortion bill and appeared, in chillingly calm language, to defend infanticide.
Although Northam’s remarks outraged conservatives, Democrats didn’t pile on the governor last week until a picture from his 1984 medical school yearbook page surfaced.
The picture depicted someone in blackface and someone in a Ku Klux Klan outfit. Northam initially apologized for being the picture on Friday — but the next day he backtracked and claimed he wasn’t in it after all.
He insisted, oddly, that he would have remembered being in such a photo because he remembered dressing up in blackface as Michael Jackson around that same time.
Despite widespread calls for his resignation from members of both parties, Northam has refused to step down from the position he won in 2017.
But Republicans’ criticism of Northam and his racist yearbook photo apparently dumbfounded Scarborough and his “Morning Joe” panel.
Scarborough (pictured above right) spoke with author and national security expert Tom Nichols, who penned an op-ed in The Washington Post, “Sorry, Republicans. You can’t call out Northam for racism and give Trump a pass.”
“I must say, there were many times I had to go off Twitter this weekend,” Scarborough said to Nichols, saying that the Republicans’ “hypocrisy” drove him off Twitter.
Related: Hillary Clinton Now Says Ralph Northam Must Resign Over Racist Photo
“But now I must say, their hypocrisy on the issue of race after we go from the Muslim ban to the Hispanic doctor, to the Gold Star mother to Charlottesville — through all of the things Donald Trump has done — seriously?” Scarborough said. “These Trump Republicans seriously are going to lecture anybody on being insensitive on the issue of race?”
Nichols replied, “Everybody’s got a right to express an opinion. Not everybody has a right to be taken seriously.”
“I mean, it goes beyond hypocrisy. It’s insulting,” Nichols added. “It says to the listener, ‘You don’t really have any firm memories, you can’t draw connections from one day to the next, so we’re just going to say this and jump on this bandwagon and you’ll totally get it because you’re so dumb you can’t remember a thing.'”
Although he argued that “nobody’s hands are clean on race” and nobody “gets a corner on vice or virtue,” Nichols also called Republicans’ outrage against the racist picture “appalling.”
The president also helped push through historic criminal justice reform legislation that Democratic presidents — including former President Barack Obama — failed to accomplish.
“For Republicans in the past two years to put up with the things they’ve put up with and then try to pivot at the last minute and have this newfound racial sensitively was really appalling,” Nichols said.
Trump’s critics have long accused him of being a racist, or at least racially insensitive.
These critics have largely ignored how his policies have helped minorities and boosted the economy for the past two years. The president also helped push through historic criminal justice reform legislation that Democratic presidents — including former President Barack Obama — failed to accomplish.
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