House Republicans are knuckling down in their effort to pray away audio recordings of President Joe Biden's interview in his classified documents investigation, and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski ridiculed them for "embarrassing" themselves to appease Donald Trump.
Only one GOP lawmaker, Rep. Dave Joyce (R-OH), voted against holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt for refusing to hand over the tapes, saying he could support a resolution that "would further politicize our judicial system to score political points," but panelists on "Morning Joe" agreed the rest of the Republican conference was more than happy to do that.
"Let's, of course, remember that there are some Republicans in the House, including [Rep.] Jim Jordan (R-OH), who defied their own subpoenas in terms of the Jan. 6 committee," said Jonathan Lemire, the White House bureau chief for Politico. "It is rank hypocrisy here. Let's talk about the politics of this. The Trump campaign would probably love the Biden audio to come out so they could put it in a campaign ad or something like that, but to a bigger picture, it seems to be yet the latest example of how the Republicans in the Senate and particularly the House exist simply to do Donald Trump's bidding."
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Special counsel Robert Hur concluded Biden had "willfully" retained classified files after leaving the vice presidency in 2017, but he believed he would not be able to secure conviction because the 81-year-old president came across as "an elderly man with a poor memory," which Republicans have seized on to undermine his re-election chances.
"They have the transcript. yeah, this is material for a Trump campaign ad to further underscore the fact that the sitting president is 81 years old," said The Atlantic's Mark Leibovich. "If there is video to sort of make that point, they'll try to avail themselves of it. Again, this is not – first of all, even in the oversight realm, and this is nominally oversight, but I guess it is certainly not legislation, not passing bills – this is kind of weak. I mean, obviously, the impeachments haven't gotten anywhere as far as President Biden goes. Any kind of, you know, the Jim Comer investigations have gone nowhere. This is just the latest attempt on that continuum."
Scarborough was embarrassed for House Republicans.
"You know, it's so weak and pathetic," he said. "The Comer committee humiliating themselves, trying to create something around the, quote, 'Biden crime family,' trying to prove that Joe Biden did something wrong as it pertains to Hunter. They just kept humiliating themselves so much that other Republicans kept telling Comer and the committee, 'Stop it, you're embarrassing us.' So this is just another example of this. They did it with [Homeland Security secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas. They keep doing this and keep humiliating themselves. There's a better way to run a House, to be part of a conservative resistance to a president. I'm surprised the House just keeps, like, stubbing their big toe."
Brzezinski agreed, saying they had failed to gain any traction despite their flailing efforts to make the president look bad.
"It is a bumbling effort to take over the narrative and lie, and they keep doing it," she said. "They keep thinking that Americans are so stupid. In this case, by the way, Americans have eyes, people have seen what has happened there. It's painful."
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