"Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough, Image via screengrab.
"Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough is furious that his old caucus, the GOP, stuck together on Tuesday in the impeachment vote of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Speaking on Wednesday morning, the angry Scarborough and commentator John Heilemann disagreed with President Donald Trump's claim that Hegseth's "spirit led to the exoneration."
"Nope. Not even close. Not even close," said Scarborough. "The whole failure is coming from the White House. The whole failure is coming from the Pentagon. The whole failure is coming, Willie, of course, from a failed colossal war. One of the worst that many historians like Robert Kagan have said [it's] winding up to be one of the worst losses in American history, for a variety of reasons. And that's on Pete Hegseth. He was the one pushing Donald Trump throughout the entire process to move further, to move faster. Pete Hegseth was the one who was questioning people's patriotism, media members' patriotism for even questioning the war."
As a sidebar, he said that he would have added an additional article of impeachment about the cuts of programs that resulted in the targeting of the girls school instead of the military target.
"All those young girls and the girls school — that would be in there, but front and center would be the war crimes that Pete Hegseth committed, that this administration committed in their extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean," Scarborough continued. "Firing missiles at boats, killing people that were floating on top of boat wreckage. I mean, that is a war crime. We all know that's a war crime. Pete Hegseth knows it's a war crime."
He recalled that even Hegseth said a few years ago that people can't follow unlawful orders.
"Well, he followed unlawful orders. He gave unlawful orders. This is black and white. Black and white. Extrajudicial killings and the Caribbean are war crimes," the co-host ranted.
"And if Republicans still, after getting absolutely wiped out in historic fashion this morning, by the way, Dave Wasserman saying that the 13.5 percent that Democrats winning by is the biggest since 1974 — if they still don't get that message after all this time, they should probably stop covering up for things like war crimes by Pete Hegseth."
But, he said, that's exactly what they did.
Co-host Willie Geist noted that the war crimes were part of the impeachment, but that it was Hegseth and Stephen Miller who helped drive the GOP's car off the cliff on Election Day.