The morning after Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Texas governor Greg Abbott sent migrants in their states to Martha’s Vineyard and Washington, D.C., respectively, as a political stunt, “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough got heated on air, calling their actions “really grotesque” and saying it’s “political human trafficking.”
Acknowledging the growing crisis on the United States’ southern border – co-host Willie Geist emphasized that we’re going to soon cross two million border encounters, “an all-time record by a long shot” – Scarborough agreed that it “needs to be fixed,” but “we don’t fix it by using the migrants as political pawns and dropping them off just so you can own the libs.”
“You don’t own the libs with human lives, dropping them off in a place that wasn’t prepared, didn’t know they were coming!” he said. “You don’t own the libs by dropping them off in the middle of a street on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., so you can say, ‘Hey, we owned the libs! We dropped these babies. We dropped these children off in the middle of the street outside of the vice president’s home!’ That’s really grotesque.”
Thursday morning saw news reports of Venezuelan migrants arriving by busload to Washington, D.C., and being dropped off at the Naval Observatory outside Vice President Kamala Harris’ home. They were sent from Texas by Gov. Abbott. In Martha’s Vineyard, a planeload of migrants arrived from Florida. They were sent by Gov. DeSantis under the guise that they’d be taken care of in liberal hubs like New York City and Boston.
Both moves were politically motivated actions to force the Biden administration to address the growing number of migrants entering the U.S. southern border illegally.
Scarborough broke it down to two truths: In one hand, there’s an immigration crisis that needs to be addressed. “In our other hand is the fact that you have some politicians that are engaging in political human trafficking, grotesque, getting migrants who have come from their countries with kids, putting them on buses and taking them up outside the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., and just dropping them off to make a political point with lives.”
He continued: “I think most Americans are like me: I want order at the southern border. I don’t think people should come in illegally. But it is grotesque to grab these people, throw them on buses, drive them up to Washington, D.C., and just drop them outside of an official residence, the vice president’s residence. It’s grotesque what they’re doing with these human beings. This is political human trafficking.”
Watch the “Morning Joe” segment in the video above.
