On Tuesday, House Democrats held a public forum to hear from Americans who have been swept up in Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Witnesses included Luke and Brent Ganger, the brothers of Renee Good, the 37-year-old Minneapolis woman who was fatally shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer last month.
Other American citizens also described firsthand their violent interactions with federal agents, including Aliya Rahman, a disabled woman who told lawmakers how she was ripped from her car and detained by ICE officers in Minneapolis.
On Wednesday, MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough reacted to the forum and blasted Republican lawmakers for not attending, accusing members of his former party of abandoning their conservative values.
“Are you proud, Republicans? Are you proud of this?” he asked as a clip of Rahman’s encounter played, adding: “On her way to a doctor’s appointment — on her way to a doctor’s appointment. Good job, Republicans. Are you proud?”
Scarborough said Trump’s federal agents had become a “paramilitary-type force” that is carrying out an “egregious breach of the most basic civil rights, constitutional rights, of Americans.
“This is what the Republican Party — the small-government party — was supposed to be against. This is what we fought against all the time: a creeping, growing federal government.”
The “Morning Joe” co-host said his former party had become unrecognizable to the one he knew during his time in Congress. “We Republicans used to always carry around the Constitution in our pocket,” he recalled. “And yeah, people would make fun of us — I didn’t care.”
Scarborough added that he “was very proud to do it” because he “actually believed in the United States Constitution.”
He asked how long Republicans would “allow themselves to be pushed around and pushed away from basic — basic — constitutional principles?”
Scarborough questioned how conservatives could morally justify doing nothing as their fellow Americans suffer violence at the hands of federal agents.
“I plead with Republicans who still think this is OK,” he said. “I plead with evangelical Christians who are among some of the biggest supporters of this sort of savagery on the streets of America. What would Jesus do? Not this. Not even close.”
You can watch Scarborough’s full comments in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”