Appearing as a guest on Monday's The ReidOut to promote his book on former President Harry Truman, disaffected former Republican Joe Scarborough again sounded more like a liberal as he declared that pro-life conservatives only pro-life "until the moment the child is born."
Ignoring the arguments against allowing Central Americans to exploit their children to illegally enter the U.S. and avoid detention, the MSNBC host faulted President Donald Trump for holding illegal aliens in "cages" without informing viewers that the facilities were built by the Barack Obama administration for practical reasons.
Picking up on Georgia Congressman Doug Collins campaigning against Georgia Democratic Senate nominee and Christian pastor Raphael Warnock, and recently attacking the pastor for supporting abortion rights, Scarborough tore into the religious interpretations of conservative Christians:
When I was in Congress, I voted a consistent pro-life line. I can also tell you, I've been a Southern Baptist my entire life, and I've read enough of the Bible to know that this grotesque reduction of Jesus's ministry to wresting one verse out of the Old Testament and claiming that somehow that trumps everything in the gospel -- that trumps everything in Jesus's ministry -- that suddenly -- oh, okay, and so if you're pro-life -- you call yourself pro-life, but you support caging children? That somehow there's a consistency there?
As usual, it was not mentioned that, according to former Obama administration Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, the cage-like detention facilities were constructed to make it easier to temporarily deal with the large numbers of migrants illegally flooding across the border, in part for safety reasons.
In fact, there are significant numbers of cases in which illegals exploit children that are not even their own to gain entry into the U.S.
The MSNBC host further lectured conservatives over the treatment of illegal immigrants as he added:
I personally think Doug Collins and a lot of Republicans would have done much better to actually read the red letters in the New Testament -- to read Jesus's words where he talks about that it's better that a mill stone be hung around a person's neck and they be thrown to the bottom of the sea before they mistreat a child -- before they cast a child away. But, obviously, it seems that they're pro-life from conception until the moment the child is born.
Scarborough went on to argue that Reverend Warnock has a better understanding of the Bible than Congressman Collins and would beat him in a debate on the subject.
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Transcript follows. Click "expand" to read more.
MSNBC
The ReidOut
November 30, 2020
7:47 p.m. Eastern
And I've got to say, Doug Collins -- and I say this as somebody that -- and I'm sure you know -- when I was in Congress, I voted a consistent pro-life line. I can also tell you, I've been a Southern Baptist my entire life, and I've read enough of the Bible to know that this grotesque reduction of Jesus's ministry to wresting one verse out of the Old Testament and claiming that somehow that Trump's everything in the gospel -- that Trump's everything in Jesus's ministry -- that suddenly -- oh, okay, and so if you're pro-life -- you call yourself pro-life, but you support caging children? That somehow there's a consistency there?
You know, obviously, I personally think Doug Collins and a lot of Republicans would have done much better to actually read the red letters in the New Testament -- to read Jesus's words where he talks about that it's better that a mill stone be hung around a person's neck and they be thrown to the bottom of the sea before they mistreat a child -- before they cast a child away. But, obviously, it seems that they're pro-life from conception until the moment the child is born.
It's the same thing with -- again, you look at what the Republican Party's focused on. You look at what Doug Collins is focusing on. I have a hard time looking at Matthew 25 where Jesus says, "What you've done for the least among these, you've done to me." I can't square their political philosophy under Donald Trump with what Jesus says about separating the sheep and goat.
So, I mean, if he really wants to have a theological debate with the reverend, that's a theological debate that he's going lose not just in Georgia but I would guess in most churches where actually the gospel still means something to people who go there, or at least means more than the latest political -- the factions and what they believe in the Republican Party.
