'Only so much stupidity you can put up with': Scarborough slams 'Boss Hoggs in the Deep South'

During a Thursday, September 4 hearing on Capitol Hill, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was questioned by both Republican and Democratic senators. The Democrats were much more aggressive in their questioning, and some of them let RFK Jr. know that they considered his anti-vaxxer views flat-out dangerous from a public health standpoint. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington State) angrily told the HHS secretary, "You are a charlatan."

But not all of the criticism of the Trump Administration's public health policies are coming from Democrats.

During a scathing but sometimes humorous rant on Friday morning, September 5, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough — a Never Trump conservative and former GOP congressman — slammed anti-vaxxers in the MAGA movement as a major threat to public health.

Scarborough told historian Jon Meacham, one of his guests, that the September 4 hearing was "just surreal" and accused RFK Jr., Vice President JD Vance and other MAGA Republicans of "lying about medicine, lying about medical research, lying about what we all knew."

"My God, JD Vance — I'm so glad the Wall Street Journal editorial page called him out yesterday," Scarborough told Meacham. "Basically, JD Vance, one of the dumbest things that, you know, this administration always does — this MAGA base always does — is they take an issue like this and say: Oh, you must be with, like, trans. You must be with mutilating children for surgeries when they're transitioning. He did that. Total lies…. Is he really saying that about the 75 percent of Republicans who oppose what RFK Jr. is saying?"

Scarborough continued, "Does JD Vance really think that 75 percent of Republicans support trans operations for minors?.... There's only so much stupidity you can put up with. I'm so glad the Wall Street Journal editorial page called him out."

The former GOP congressman compared the MAGA movement, anti-vaxxers and the second Trump Administration to the nativist Know Nothings of the 19th Century.

Scarborough told Meacham, "Outside of the Know Nothings, what other political movement has produced such backward-looking stupidity?"

When Meacham noted that the anti-vaxxer movement "in some ways, comes out of the John Birch Society" and "Cold War paranoia" of the 1950s and 1960s, Scarborough responded, "It's just a race to the bottom. And these people that are saying it now vaccinated their own children and, I guarantee you, were the first in line to get the COVID vaccine shots. In fact, before (Florida Gov.) Ron DeSantis put his finger in the wind to see which way the political winds were blowing, he was rushing to veterans across the state of Florida so they could get the COVID vaccine shots."

Scarborough argued that in the past, anti-vaxxers were attacked as "hippies," whereas in 2025, anti-vaxxers are "the Boss Hoggs in the Deep South" — a reference to the Boss Hogg character on the late 1970s/early 1980s program "The Dukes of Hazzard."

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