MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough dismissed comparisons between the violent race riots last summer and the protests at the United States Capitol on January 6th, claiming that small businesses that were destroyed are no more important than taco stands, as reported by Fox News.
The host went on a rant on Tuesday about the subject, responding to those who have pointed out the media’s hypocrisy in covering the Black Lives Matter-fueled riots, which killed nearly 30 Americans and caused over $2 billion in damage nationwide, and the mostly peaceful Capitol protests. Scarborough said, “I know there are idiots…that will say, ‘Well, this mom-and-pop store was vandalized during the summer riots, and that’s just as bad as the United States Capitol being vandalized.’ No jackass, it’s not.”
Scarborough went on to claim that he is “a fierce believer in people’s right to defend their private property,” but that he won’t “confuse a taco stand with the United States Capitol. I’m not going to confuse the selling of tacos with actually moving through a constitutional process that is laid out in the United States Constitution.” He ended his rant by claiming that “property damage does not equal insurrection.”
Scarborough subsequently faced widespread criticism on social media for his outburst. After the Daily Caller posted a clip of his rant mocking him, Scarborough responded by rhetorically asking “Are you too stupid to understand the destruction of personal property is abhorrent, and at the same time realize that a terrorist attack against the U.S. Capitol is a greater threat to America?”
The Caller responded by posting footage of a devastated small business owner whose store was burned down in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Faced with that footage, Scarborough backtracked and said that “the freaks who burned it down should rot in jail until they pay him back,” but also dismissed the comparison by simply saying “No jackass, it was a furniture store.”
The events of January 6th have shone a spotlight on widespread hypocrisy from the Left, including the media and the Democratic Party, in their reactions to last year’s race riots across America. While several prominent Democrats, including Kamala Harris, openly endorsed the riots and even paid money to legal funds aimed at bailing rioters out of jail, those same politicians have condemned the Capitol protests even though those protests caused little to no damage and only a fraction of the deaths caused by last year’s riots.