Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough slammed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s attack on Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) on Monday, questioning how the Pentagon chief “finds time” to campaign against the congressman while “fighting a war.”

Hegseth was speaking at an America First Workers Special Event in Kentucky on Monday when he launched into a campaign push for former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, who is running against Massie.

Massie, a critic of President Donald Trump’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and of the Iran war, has been the target of some of the president’s most recent attacks.

At the beginning of Tuesday’s Morning Joe, the team ran a clip of Hegseth accusing Massie of “throwing elbows” at fellow Republicans and voting “with Democrats.”

Reacting, Scarborough called the moment “really incredible.”

“You have a secretary of defense who is fighting a war that has upended the economy, not only in America, but across the world, that as Bob Kagan has written, may be one of the greatest losses militarily in American history,” the host began. “And he finds time to campaign against a Republican congressman who Donald Trump hates because that Republican congressman is trying to follow through on Donald Trump and Republican candidates’ promise to release all the Epstein files.”

He continued: “And because Donald Trump has been trying in every way possible to cover up the Epstein files, something we haven’t talked about since this war began, he is doing everything he can, along with all of his billionaire supporters, to destroy a congressman who wants the Epstein files released.”

Scarborough rounded on Hegseth again: “And the secretary of defense has time to go down and, instead of trying to prosecute this war which we are losing politically, he’s instead trying to beat a congressman because the congressman wants full accountability for the victims of Epstein and all the very powerful people around Epstein, some say, including the president.”

Co-host Willie Geist agreed, calling the remarks by the defense secretary “unusual” and “inappropriate” before warning that there could be some Hatch Act “considerations” – referring to legislation that restricts the partisan activities of executive branch employees.

“Joe, I know this is something you’ve talked about for years now, which is that Thomas Massie, the argument goes from his opponents and yesterday from the head of defense is not conservative, that he’s anti-Trump. He’s not conservative. Look at the voting record of Thomas Massie!” Geist said.

He added: “Talk to anybody who has ever spent 10 minutes on Capitol Hill. He is incredibly conservative in all the ways that conservatism used to actually hold up. Now we’re talking about Trumpism, which is something very different from conservatism. But the MAGA folks, secretary of defense, trying to conflate those two things. If you’re against Donald Trump, even on the Epstein files, now you’re not conservative.”

Scarborough agreed before running down a laundry list of Trump moves that he said were dragging down Republican polling numbers in a crucial midterm year, citing new figures from a New York Times/Siena poll released Tuesday.

The host accused Trump of “piling on the greatest debt ever” as he warned the “staggering” figure now sees the U.S. spend more on “servicing its debt” than on national defense. He then lambasted the president for “kowtowing” to foreign leaders in Russia and China that conservatives previously “pushed back” against while “abandoning” NATO allies and withdrawing troops from Europe.

Scarborough said that Republicans are “doing the opposite” of what they traditionally had just to please Trump.

“And they wonder why they’re getting crushed right now,” he added. “They don’t care about affordability. They don’t care about working Americans.”

Watch above via MS NOW.

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