Scarborough faults Biden for ‘permissive’ border message

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough faulted the Biden administration at then end of his “Morning Joe” program on Tuesday for a “permissive” border message that was leading to a surge of immigrants.

Scarborough said he agreed with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) that the situation at the border was a crisis. 

“I’ve got to say Joe Manchin is right about the permissive message that has been sent,” Scarborough said Tuesday morning. “This is a crisis and they need to alter that message. If you look back at what happened to Jimmy Carter in 1980, it’s important that they fix that message “

The Biden administration last month announced a sweeping immigration platform that, if passed through Congress, would create a path to legal citizenship for some 11 million undocumented people in America. 

Manchin, in an interview with CNN this week, called the recent surge of migrants at the border “a crisis” and criticized Biden’s messaging on immigration reform. 

“Whatever message was sent — it was sure interpreted the wrong way,” Manchin said. “It’s a crisis — oh it’s a crisis.”

Some Democrats have argued getting significant immigration reform passed through a narrowly divided Congress is unrealistic. 

“We’re open to a conversation with anyone about this but we think this is a much more comprehensive way to deal with this issue than just simply, you know, a wall,” one White House official told The Hill when Biden’s policy was rolled out. 

During former President Trump’s tenure, Scarborough lambasted the Department of Homeland Security for its family separation policy, comparing immigration officials to Nazis. 

“I know children are being marched away to showers, marched away to showers​, being told they are — just like the Nazis said that they were taking people to the showers and then they never came back,”​ he said at the time. “You think they would use another trick like hey, got a slurpee room over there we’re going to take them to get a slurpee. That would be better than we’re marching them to the showers and we’ll be right back and they never come back.”