Joe Scarborough Calls Out GOP’s ‘Embarrassing’ Behavior At Fauci Hearing With 3 Words

Joe Scarborough only needed three words to sum up what he thought of Republicans’ behavior at Dr. Anthony Fauci’s hearing Wednesday: “Sheer political theater.”

The “Morning Joe” host said on his MS NOW show Thursday that because the GOP opted to put on a political “clown show” instead of having a “normal hearing,” the public lost out on receiving potentially crucial information about the origins of COVID-19 and the government’s pandemic response.

“I mean, the Fauci thing, just sheer political theater,” Scarborough said. “They shamed themselves. We Americans needed answers yesterday; we needed answers on the origins of this, the best information they had, the thinking about closing down schools, the thinking about all these other things.”

Fauci — the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who helped lead the nation’s COVID-19 pandemic response — appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Wednesday after being subpoenaed. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the chairman of the committee, has accused Fauci for years of misleading the public and Congress about the source of the outbreak.

During the hearing, Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment rights numerous times and declined to answer lawmakers’ questions, making Republicans increasingly incensed — but Fauci did warn the committee that he planned to do just that.

Fauci said during his opening remarks that he’s already testified before Congress multiple times and sat for sworn hearings and dayslong interviews on the same pandemic questions now before the committee.

He said due to this — and what he described as Paul’s “obsession” with prosecuting him — he would be invoking the Fifth Amendment.

“The only conclusion I can reach,” Fauci said in his opening statement. “Is that the sole reason [Paul] is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something — anything — that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.’”

Thanks to this, Fauci was pretty closed-lipped, and some Republicans got real weird about it.

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) dropped an f-bomb in an explosive rant aimed at Fauci while Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) reduced himself to asking asinine questions — like, “What color tie are you wearing?” — in an attempt to shake Fauci out of repeatedly pleading the Fifth.

Scarborough called Moreno and Hawley’s performances “embarrassing.”

“Guys swearing — ‘blah, blah, what the F!’ — and then you had other people, you know, ‘What’s the color of your tie? What’s the color of the carpet?’” Scarborough mocked.

“It was such a clown show,” Scarborough said before emphasizing his point again. “But … there are still open questions on the origins of this virus.”

Scarborough added that he would’ve liked to hear Fauci’s rationale about the decision to “close down schools,” but due to the GOP’s combative behavior, “we didn’t get a chance to hear that yesterday.”

“The entire hearing was framed with ‘I’m going to put the guy who’s testifying here behind bars,’” the host concluded.