“Morning Joe” slammed the GOP’s “deeply unserious” calls for a red state secession, calling it a money-making ploy to appeal to far-right donors.
On Monday morning, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tweeted that “We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government,” drawing furious responses from the left and more moderate right.
“This is so laughable because blue states as we all know are the donor states, or the states where taxpayers take it on the chin to take care of districts like Marjorie Taylor Greene’s, to take care of districts across taxes where Ted Cruz talks about secession,” host Joe Scarborough said on Tuesday’s episode of “Morning Joe.”
“What is it that so deeply offends [Republicans], like three trans athletes in Utah want to swim? Is that real?” he asked guest commentator Charlie Sykes.
Both agreed that calls for a “national divorce” were not to be taken as a serious possibility, but rather as a tactic to collect funds from right-wing supporters.
“It’s fascinating that they’re so desperate to raise money from small donors, they’re actually willing to say, we need to have a civil war,” Scarborough pointed out.
Sykes agreed that their motives were purely “to keep racheting up the outrage.” Still, such rhetoric is not without danger, he said.
“People like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ron DeSantis are appealing to the id of the party, the id of the right, which is anti-Ukraine, which is willing to tolerate this sort of notion that our real enemy is not Vladimir Putin. Our real enemy is other Americans, that we need to pit red states versus blue states,” he continued. “And so unfortunately, there is an audience for this.”
Added Scarborough, “They don’t hate Russia. They hate Americans.”
Watch the full segment above.
