MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” panel criticized the Republican Party’s resistance to some of President Joe Biden’s executive nominees during Wednesday’s broadcast, calling it “a joke” and saying “they’ve surrendered their right to be outraged.”
Joined by contributor Claire McCaskill, the panel began discussing the Republican opposition to Neera Tanden’s nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) because of her past social media activity and other actions. Several on the show accused Republican party members of “hypocrisy” after tolerating former President Donald Trump’s tweets and behavior. (RELATED: GOP Senator Grills Biden Interior Nominee On Oil And Natural Gas Industry: ‘Why Not Just Let These Workers Keep Their Jobs?’)
“We’ve known her point of view when she worked for Hillary Clinton attacking Bernie Sanders … going after some of these senators, Republican senators and Democrats alike,” host Willie Geist began. “What’s more important, her tweets or the hypocrisy from Republicans, who now suddenly are stunned and outraged by people saying mean things and by keeping the temperature too hot and everything else that they stood by and watched under Donald Trump? But should not the White House have seen all of this coming?”
“I would imagine there was discussion, do you really think they would have the nerve to not vote for this nominee because of mean tweets? Really?” McCaskill, a former U.S. senator from Missouri, responded. “You know, we’ve watched over four years what mean tweets have done to our country.”
Host Joe Scarborough jumped in and suggested that if the tables were turned, and this were a Republican president’s nominee, that the same criticism would be happening. McCaskill responded that “things are a little different now” because of what Trump did with his Twitter account.
“You just cannot ignore how incredibly hypocritical it is for the Republican Party to get all up in arms about mean tweets,” she added.
“It’s hard to ignore. It’s very hard to ignore,” host Mika Brzezinski responded, before saying that “there’s two sides to this” because the administration “wants to turn the page on this type of thing.” She referenced the resignation of former deputy press secretary TJ Ducklo, who was accused of harassing a reporter, and said “they had to do what they had to do because they don’t want to be like what we’ve been dealing with for four years.”
The panel then brought up Xavier Becerra, Biden’s nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and played a video clip of some Republicans speaking in opposition to his nomination.
“The hypocrisy is appalling,” Brzezinski said after the video.
“Did we hear any concerns, Willie, about Scott Atlas when he was going in there spreading lies,” Scarborough said, referring to Trump’s adviser for the coronavirus pandemic. “Come on. What a joke.”
“Well, they’ve surrendered their right to be outraged. They surrendered their right to question these people,” Geist responded. “I don’t think they realize that over the last five years by standing by and letting Scott Atlas, and the parade of unqualified people, walk into the West Wing, they’ve surrendered, Republicans have, their right to be outraged by nominations like these.”