“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough could not contain his anger and bafflement Friday over Vice President JD Vance‘s “ahistoric” and “stupid” comments recently defending former U.S. President Richard Nixon.
At a recent speaking event, Vance said that Nixon’s Watergate scandal would be a “12-hour news story” if it happened today and the thought of it taking down a presidency is “crazy.” The vice president went on to draw a parallel between how “the deep state took down Richard Nixon” and how Donald Trump has been treated by governmental institutions.
Scarborough took issue with all of those remarks.
“What he’s saying is ahistoric. What he’s saying is stupid,” Scarborough said. “That is defining deviancy down. That’s trying to say, ‘Listen, what we’re doing now, it’s not bad, just like Nixon and Watergate!’ Let’s just be really clear here: The Vice President of the United States just said that the deep state went after Nixon. No. Richard Nixon used the deep state to go after political enemies, just like, well, your administration, Mr. Vice President.”
“They not only broke into the DNC, they broke into doctors’ offices, into psychiatrists’ offices, trying to get people’s most private, intimate records. They had an enemies list. They tapped lines,” Scarborough noted of Nixon’s administration, adding, “This is what JD Vance says is normal.”
“That deep state comment? So stupid. Where did you go to school, man?” Scarborough eventually asked. “Did you really get a degree from Yale?”
You can watch the full “Morning Joe” segment yourself in the video below.
While “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski tried to shift the focus of the segment, Scarborough quickly pivoted back to Vance’s comments.
“I’m not ready to let this go,” Scarborough said. “I grew up in a family of Nixon supporters. My father was a big Nixon supporter up until the very end. He thought the media and the East Coast establishment was after him, up until the very end when he turned on Nixon because he understood just how horrible everything he had done was.”
Former George W. Bush administration official Richard Haass joined the conversation, explaining one key difference he sees between the Trump and Nixon administrations.
“I think the difference between Nixon and Trump is actually important. Richard Nixon, however flawed he was, was basically a conservative,” Haass said. “The contrast today? We don’t have a conservative in the White House. We have a radical. We have a populist. We have someone who puts himself, in most instances, before the country, and that is a fundamental difference.”
