Scarborough Blasts ‘Clowns’ DeSantis, Abbott — Mask Ban ‘Antithesis of Being Conservative’

MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough on Thursday went after Govs. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Greg Abbott (R-TX) for their moves to ban local school boards from imposing mask mandates on students as the country deals with the Delta variant of the coronavirus.

Scarborough called the GOP governors “clowns” for “trying to consolidate power in a centralized state.” He said what the two leaders are doing is “the antithesis of being conservative.”

“I just want to underline the fact, again, how ironic it is, how cynical actually, how stupid it is that you have these governors that presiding over massive states … with massive populations that have communities, you know, thousands of different communities that have different needs, and they are putting a blanket order over the entire state, saying local governments can’t respond to an emergency the way that the local communities need them to respond to that emergency. It is the antithesis of being conservative,” Scarborough asserted.

“We have these clowns running around calling themselves small-government conservatives who are trying to consolidate power in a centralized state. It’s just not what you do,” he continued. “You let people on the ground, you let doctors. You let nurses, you let mayors. You let city council people, you let local officials, hospital administrators — they know what’s best. School officials know what’s best for their own schools, more than somebody in a centralized state, an executive in a centralized state having a one-size-fits-all approach. And my gosh, in Texas, of course, they do have an emergency in Texas.”

“The governor is right. There is an emergency there,” Scarborough added. “That’s why he’s calling for help from outside the state. But he can help his own state by letting people on the ground closest to the hospitals and to the schools and to the local crises make those decisions on their own. The same thing in the state of Florida. How crazy it is that you have a governor doing a one-size-fits-all approach? And I can tell you one school after another school after another school in areas that supported Donald Trump across the state of Florida are saying, ‘We need our children, we need our teachers, we need anybody on campus to mask up. We just need to play it smart. We need to play it safe.’ These governors are way out on a limb here.”

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