MSNBC co-host Joe Scarborough said Friday on his show “Morning Joe” that Republicans are being too “harsh,” which will cause them to lose elections.
The panel was discussing Republicans criticizing the circumstances surrounding the release of WNBA star Brittney Griner from Russia, including Griner refusing to stand for the national anthem in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in 2020.
Scarborough said, “Americans get it; Americans are smart enough to get it. There are people that care protesting during George Floyd. There are a lot of Americans that didn’t really get black athletes and some white athletes kneeling during the national anthem. They didn’t like it. They didn’t understand. But they understood, ‘I’m white, I don’t understand why they’re doing this, but this is America, right? This is part of America.’ You don’t put somebody in a Russian labor camp and keep them there because they’re protesting on a protest that you may not understand.”
He continued, “This is a bigger point. Even Americans who didn’t understand the kneeling during the national anthem, again, there is a patience and an understanding. You remember the NFL when it happened, we heard time and again, people saying ‘never going to watch the NFL again,’ NFL ratings are down, all the right-wingers going, ‘Oh, this is the end for the NFL’ I heard people saying ‘I will never, never watch an NFL game again.’ Here we are two, three years later, NFL ratings have never been higher. The league has never been hotter. What does that mean? That means Americans are pragmatic. They get it. OK, that happened. We may not understand everything about the protests. We may not get why but it’s because we haven’t lived that experience just like we haven’t lived Brittney Griner’s experience. We weren’t a black woman. We weren’t a black gay woman in Waco, Texas. We’ll never understand, right?”
Scarborough added, “And why do I say all of this? I say all of this to say that Americans are pragmatic. Americans understand, for the most part. And these harsh Republicans that keep using these same stupid tactics, what am I going to say? They keep losing. This doesn’t work politically. Americans don’t want leaders who hate. They don’t want leaders who divide, and Republicans under Donald Trump using this strategy, they just keep losing, and they’re going to keep losing, and if they can’t celebrate an American coming home and being freed from a Russian penal colony, they will never understand the goodness of Americans.”
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