Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough eviscerated Republican lawmakers as “cowards” on Wednesday for backing President Donald Trump’s new $1.8 billion compensation fund, which the host shredded as a “slush fund” for January 6th “cop killers.”

Scarborough reacted after the show opened with a clip of Vice President JD Vance’s defense of the fund while standing in for Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt at Tuesday’s White House press briefing.

The fund, designed to compensate people who claim they were unfairly targeted in prosecutions under past administrations, came as part of a settlement between Trump and the IRS.

But critics, including some MAGA pundits, have voiced concern about who might receive money from the pot, like those who assaulted Capitol police officers in 2021.

Scarborough began by mocking Vance for making the case for the fund, pointing at his past turnaround on pardons for January 6 rioters after saying it would never happen:

You’ve got to assume a $1.8 billion slush fund for people that beat the hell out of cops. Why do we say that? Because Donald Trump was asked. ‘Mr. President, is this going to be even for people who beat the hell out of cops?’ And the president said, ‘Oh, we’re going to have a fine commission to determine whether it be these people and including those who beat the hell out of cops, are going to get this money.’

Trashing the initiative as “extraordinarily outrageous,” Scarborough continued to rage that the Republican Party continued to “blindly” back the president’s projects that he warned were costing the taxpayer billions of dollars while working Americans were “struggling.”

He went on:

We got this billion-dollar ‘Marie Antoinette’ ballroom, now that they’re talking about funding and $1 billion plus slush fund for people who beat the hell out of cops. It is a slush fund, a weaponization slush fund for supporters of Donald Trump, JD Vance and the Republican Party. And again, you’ve just got to say, with all time low – hey, Republicans, listen – you have all time low approval ratings!

You are getting wiped out by Democrats in every poll that’s coming out. And you’re blindly going along with a ‘Marie Antoinette’ ballroom for these taxpayers who can’t afford groceries, are going to have to fund with their own tax dollars, a war that keeps going on and on and on and on that they’re going to have to fund, even though they can’t afford to put gas in their car. And you’ve got $1 billion slush fund that I guarantee you will go, if the past is prologue, to the people who beat the hell out of cops. For people who beat the hell out of cops!

Take your ‘Support the Blue’ flags down because you’re just full of it! You’re full of it!

But Scarborough wasn’t done, as he railed into Republicans even more:

You were such cowards you refused to even put up a plaque honoring the dead! Honoring the dead, honoring those cops that were so brutalized and torn to shreds that they went home and had PTSD and killed themselves because you sat there and cowered and now you won’t support them.

Rising to scream down camera, the host shouted: “And now you’re going to pay the people who killed the cops!”

“It’s twisted!” co-host Mika Brzezinski said.

“Good morning, America!” Scarborough added.

He then rounded one last time: “And by the way, if you don’t think they’re cop killers, little boy with your podcast, if you don’t think they’re cop killers, talk to their wives, talk to their sons, talk to their daughters, talk to [deceased Capitol officer] Brian Sicknick’s mom, talk to their families, and they will tell you the very people Donald Trump wants to give billions to are cop killers. Ask them who killed those cops on January the 6th! They’ll tell you!”

He concluded: “It’s just beyond disgusting that these Republicans sit back and do nothing, do absolutely nothing when they know what he is doing is wrong.”

Watch above via MS NOW.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!