MSNBC host Joe Scarborough fantasized over how Democrats should punish Republican Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville for putting the nominations of hundreds of military officers on hold.
Tuberville has put 265 nominations on hold due to the Department of Defense’s (DOD) policy to fund travel for women service members seeking an abortion in a state where the procedure is legal. Scarborough imagined if Senate Democrats should allow Tuberville to force the senators to sit in the chamber for several weeks and make the process “hurt.”
“I do think sometimes, Democrats just play by Marcus of Queensbury rules,” Scarborough said. “I think the Democrats need somebody that runs, respectful of everyone in the chamber, but says if you’re going to affect military readiness by holding up 600 promotions in the military. If you’re going to protect our ability to have American interest represented across the globe, and hold up on ambassador after another, I’m gonna make you do it and I’m gonna make you do it in front of everybody else and you’re gonna be responsible for everybody sitting in those chambers for four, five, six, seven weeks. No breaks.”
“And I’m gonna tell every Democrat when I call for a recess to vote down and keep them in there,” Scarborough continued. “And after I finished with the 600 military promotions that are being held up, I’d move on to the ambassadors that they’re holding up and I would grind them down to the ground, they would burn down their buildings, I would salt the earth to make sure nothing ever grew back again and by the time they got out of the black hole of Calcutta, like in the United States Senate, then walk and go we’re not gonna do that again. We got to bring them back the next day and make it hurt. But the Democrats don’t do that.”
Tuberville previously said he regrets holding up the nominations, but indicated it’s worth it to try to stop taxpayer-funded abortions. (RELATED: Despite Trumpeting ‘Threat’ To National Security, White House Refuses To Call Senator Holding Up DOD Confirmations)
“I hate to have to do this. It’s unfortunate. But we make the laws over here. The DOD doesn’t. This is not about abortion. It’s about taxpayer-funded abortions,” Tuberville told Punchbowl News. “If this was about a list of personnel, people actually doing the fighting, this might be different … If this had to do with winning a war, obviously I wouldn’t be doing this.”
Democrats and the White House have accused Tuberville of threatening national security.