MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough slammed this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference speakers for their “hellacious” remarks, the worst of which he identified as an attack on “the ghost of” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
“There is no explaining away some of the inhumane statements that were made at CPAC, some of the inane statements, some of the stupid ― no other word but stupid,” he said during his Monday “Morning Joe” broadcast.
Scarborough, who identified as a Republican until 2017, pointed to “a lot of low points there for a conference that I used to go to every year,” stunned by the mockery of McCain first raised by conservative pundit Michelle Malkin and subsequently echoed by Fox News host Jeanine Pirro.
“Sanctuary cities have metastasized and both parties are to blame,” Malkin said in her call for immigration reform, naming former House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Bush family and then McCain’s ghost as she gestured toward the sky.
Scarborough admonished the conference’s attendees for cheering on the anti-McCain remarks, questioning whether they lacked human decency.
“I don’t know if they weren’t raised right, I don’t know if their mothers and fathers never taught them basic values,” he said. “I’m sure they did and I’m sure they just lost it along the way, maybe they were just swept up in the excitement of actually being somewhere.”
The CPAC speech provoked backlash from the senator’s daughter, Meghan McCain, who denounced it as “ghoulish and deeply disturbed political propaganda.”
Wife Cindy McCain also came to the defense of her late husband, telling Malkin on Twitter that she never knew him and that she “should be so lucky.”
