Joe Scarborough Skewers Trump Administration’s Socialist Policies: ‘This Is Outrageous’

“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough trashed the Trump administration and the Republican Party Friday morning over their “outrageous” adoption of socialist policies and their further blurring of the lines between the private sector and the federal government. Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski began the “Morning Joe” segment in question by recapping how the Department of Commerce has begun to take equity stakes in multiple different tech companies. The DOC announced Thursday that it would be designating over $870 million in federal incentives under the CHIPS and Science Act in exchange for equity stakes in participating companies. Scarborough slammed the move as pure “pre-Thatcher-style socialism.” “This is a policy that poisoned pre-Thatcher Britain. That Republicans keep spreading socialism across the tech sector business is deeply disturbing,” Scarborough said. “[Republicans] point at a radical fringe group in the Democratic Party and claim, ‘Oh, this is what Democrats are doing. They’re socialists!’ And yet you actually have Republicans practicing socialism.” “This is outrageous,” Scarborough added. “Every Republican, every Democrat, every small government conservative should be against this.” You can watch the full “Morning Joe” segment yourself in the video below. Panelist Richard Haass, who worked as an official in the George W. Bush administration, echoed Scarborough’s concerns and sentiments. “Today’s Republican Party has ceased to be a conservative party. Everything it is doing is antithetical to the principles of Thatcher, of Reagan,” Haass explained. “The government is essentially making the private sector a quasi-public sector. History suggests it’s expensive, it’s inefficient, it’s bad for the economy, it’s bad for democracy, it leads to corruption, it leads to inefficiency. And yet we’re doing it.” “We don’t have a conservative party. We have a populist party,” Haass concluded. “We have a personalist party, and this is an extension of it.” Scarborough went on to suggest that the Trump administration is putting itself in the position to rig the private sector and choose which free market businesses win and lose. “What have conservatives like myself said forever about this? The government should not pick winners and losers,” Scarborough said. “The government should allow everybody an equal opportunity for their small business, for their startup, for their company, to succeed. But Republicans, in the most socialist of ways, are picking winners and losers now.”