Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough slammed Senator JD Vance (R-OH) for “exploiting the grief” of two parents from Springfield, Ohio, by way of politicizing the loss of life of their eleven-year-previous son Aiden Clark with the aid of recalling the time former President Donald Trump’s attempted to smear him with the aid of promoting a conspiracy concept about an intern of his who died.
In August 2023, Clark was killed on his strategy to his first day of sixth grade when his faculty bus was once compelled off the street by way of a minivan. In May just 2024, the driving force, Hermanio Joseph, a criminal Haitian immigrant, was once convicted and sentenced for involuntary manslaughter and vehicular homicide.
All the way through Morning Joe’s opening on Tuesday, the hosts highlighted a shifting front web page story within the New York Times about how Clark’s oldsters were struggling to navigate the usage of their son’s story by means of MAGA to attack immigrants by way of specializing in Joseph’s standing.
Asking co-host Mika Brzezinski to hold up the newspaper, Scarborough said: “I can’t think about the pain those oldsters are going via. After which to look at their son, their child used as a political prop, to be lied about, making the pain worse.”
Scarborough then relayed his own story from Could 2020 when Trump attacked him via calling for the reopening of the case of Lori Klausutis, an intern who died in Scarborough’s congressional administrative center in 2001 when he was a congressman. The demise used to be deemed unintended as Klausutis suffered from an undiagnosed heart situation but Trump implied there was more to the story.
This isn’t non-public to me, but this is personal to folks I know. When Donald Trump determined to attack me as a result of he didn’t like my Covid coverage and he lied a few girl who labored in my office and claimed that we had been involved and that I had her killed.
And her husband, the widowed husband, begged him to stop mendacity because of the excruciating ache that it put her parents via and put him via the truth that he had not been in a position to maneuver on for 25 years because of the lies. They could now not in finding rest or peace. And Donald Trump didn’t care. He just stored doing it because he didn’t care what the household thought. He didn’t care what the husband notion. He didn’t care [about] the individuals whose grief he was most effective making worse…
Pivoting again to Clark’s story, Scarborough continued:
And here we now have in Ohio, Mika, we have a family enduring that ache because their son’s being lied about for political functions and they have got been placed on discover.
The father spoke ahead of the city council, I believe a month or two ago, announcing please cease lying about my son. You know nothing about him. And if you did, you might recognize this is the alternative of what he could be pronouncing right now based on the excellent brief life that he lived.
Scarborough went on to attack Vance and Trump he accused the Republicans of being “with out disgrace” and “decency” – claiming there had been a change in standards in U.S. politics.
However they don’t care. I cannot think about these men. I can not think about folks when oldsters are begging them: ‘Please stop lying about our useless youngsters, please cease. Allow us to bury them in peace and transfer on.’ They gained’t do it, Mika. They are with out shame. They understand higher.
And but they continue to take advantage of the demise of a young kid in Springfield and others and lie about it because they wish to achieve energy. This is stark. And if you think that is standard, smartly you haven’t been round politics long enough, because I will be able to let you know if it took place whereas I was in Congress, if it happened while Claire [McCaskill] used to be within the Senate and someone did this, they would be excommunicated. No person would discuss to them. They would be scorned. Their leadership would say, ‘You express regret to the oldsters, you’re taking again the lie or you’ll be stripped of your committees the next day to come. You straighten up.’
But there aren’t any guardrails, Mika. No guardrails on the truth, no guardrails on decency, no guardrails on the very issues that preserve us sure collectively even in the most troublesome of political instances. And let me say that happens. Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan might no longer stand each and every different’s political philosophies, but they worked together. Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich might now not stand every other’s political philosophies and that got unpleasant. They still work together for the betterment of America. But balancing the funds four years in a row for the first time in a century: right here, no guardrails, no ties that bind, no decency. And I believe decency is on the ballot as much as democracy.
“They are inflicting ache on folks purposely,” Brzezinski mentioned.
Watch above on MSNBC.
The put up Joe Scarborough Blasts JD Vance ‘Exploiting Grief’ — By using Invoking Trump’s Dead Intern Conspiracy first regarded on Mediaite.