The hosts of MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” argued Friday morning that the partial Department of Homeland Security funding approved by the Senate Thursday night will not be enough to make Americans forget that Republicans “let this fester” for five weeks.
The DHS funding was approved by Senate Democrats and Republicans after weeks worth of TSA paycheck delays, which led to unbearable wait times at multiple airports across America. According to “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough, those wait times produced “a lot of anger” among Americans.
“You have Iran. You have high gas prices. You have the polls just plummeting for Republicans, and then you had this chaos, which — I will say it now that we’re beyond it — a lot of cops, a lot of police commissioners, a lot of security people, were constantly saying [saying to me], ‘Joe, this is an extraordinary, really frightening possibility for terrorism,’” Scarborough said, observing, “Republicans were just sitting there letting it happen.”
“Count me thankful that it looks like this is going to finally be resolved,” the “Morning Joe” host told viewers, before asking, “But man, what damage was done to the Republican Party, while they let this fester for five weeks while an unpopular war was going on and gas prices are spiking?”
You can watch the full segment yourself in the video below.
“Morning Joe” co-host Jonathan Lemire echoed Scarborough’s sentiments, expressing his belief that the bad memories of the past few weeks will prove too difficult for American voters to forget during midterm elections later this year.
“A lot of these government shutdowns, they don’t matter. They come and they go, right? Like, in the moment, they feel like a big deal, and certainly for the workers who aren’t getting their paycheck, they are a big deal,” Lemire acknowledged. “But a few weeks later, everyone [has] sort of moved on.”
“This one, because of those lines in the airport, I think it might have a little more stickiness, a little more staying power,” the “Morning Joe” anchor concluded, arguing, “It adds to this sort of general picture that, in particular, the Republicans in Washington are out of touch [with] what matters.”
