Scarborough slams MAGA for using 'savage' Kirk murder to 'stifle free speech'

On Monday, September 15, Vice President JD Vance guest-hosted "The Charlie Kirk Show" on Real America's Voice. Vance, discussing the fatal shooting of MAGA activist and Turning Point USA founder Kirk, claimed that most of the political violence plaguing the United States is coming from the left — a claim that conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough forcefully refuted on the September 16 broadcast of "Morning Joe."

Vance told "Charlie Kirk Show" viewers, "People on the left are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence. This is not a both-sides problem. Both sides have a problem; one side has a much bigger and malignant problem. And that is the truth we must be told."

But Scarborough, a Never Trump conservative and former GOP congressman, attacked Vance's comments as wildly disingenuous, describing the many acts of violent extremism that have come from far-right MAGA Republicans.

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"I really don't know where to begin," Scarborough told fellow "Morning Joe" host Mika Brzezinski. "Charlie Kirk's savage murder is violence not only against Charlie Kirk, against his wife, against their beautiful children — it's also violence against the First Amendment, against free speech, and against American democracy."

The MSNBC host, however, went on to call out MAGA Republicans "who would use that tragic event to trying to stifle free speech," including Trump adviser Stephen Miller. And he cited examples of violence against Democrats, from the fatal shooting of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman to a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to an attack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul Pelosi in their California home.

"I must say: I have been baffled over the past several days by people like Stephen Miller talking about this being a one-sided issue when just a few months ago, the most powerful Democrat in the state of Minnesota was gunned down in her family's home," Scarborough told Brzezinski. "And after she was shot to death in her family's home, her husband was gunned down and killed in their family home…. The same people who were calling for civil war are the same people who said absolutely nothing when she was shot."

Scarborough added, "Or maybe we should talk…. about the madman who had a hit list with 42 Democrats on it…. This followed an attempted arson, trying to burn down (Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro's) home…. His goal, he admitted, was to burn the house down, find the Democratic governor in the state of Pennsylvania, and then beat him to death with a hammer. This, of course, reminds us of the madman that broke into Nancy Pelosi's home, screaming, 'Where's Nancy?' — a chant eerily reminiscent of what we heard on January 6, the day that everyone who's talking about civil war would like you to forget forever…. But what did we hear after Paul Pelosi, an 82-year-old man, got brutalized and hit in the head? What did we hear? We heard laughter. We heard jokes repeatedly."

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