Morning Joe homeowner Joe Scarborough He slammed the senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) for “exploiting the grief” of two Springfield, Ohio parents by politicizing the death of their 11-year-old son Aiden Clark remembering the former president Donald Trump’s He tried to smear her by pushing a conspiracy theory about a dead intern.

In August 2023, Clark was killed while attending sixth grade when her school bus was run off the road by a minivan. Driver in May 2024, Hermanio JosephA legal Haitian immigrant, he was found guilty and sentenced for involuntary manslaughter and vehicular homicide.

During Morning Joe’s At the opening on Tuesday, the landlords underlined a lively development front page story New York Times It’s about how Clark’s parents struggled with their son’s story being used by MAGA to attack immigrants by focusing on Joseph’s status.

Asking the co-host Mika Brzezinski Scarborough said as he held up the paper: “I can’t imagine the pain these parents are going through. And then to watch their son, their child, be used as political props, lied to, and the pain get worse.

Scarborough later quoted Own story from May 2020 When Trump attacked her, calling for the case to be reopened Lori KlausutisAn intern who died in Scarborough’s congressional office in 2001 while he was a congressman. The death was deemed accidental because Klausutis was suffering from an undiagnosed heart condition, but Trump hinted there was more to the story.

This is not specific to me, but it is specific to people I know. When Donald Trump decided to attack me because he didn’t like my Covid coverage and lied about a woman working in my office, claiming we were involved and that I killed her.

And her widowed husband begged her to stop lying because of the unbearable pain her parents were going through and made her face the fact that she couldn’t move on with her life for 25 years because of the lies. They could not find peace and tranquility. And Donald Trump didn’t care. He kept doing this because he didn’t care what the family thought. She didn’t care what her husband thought. He didn’t care about the people who made his suffering worse…

Turning to Clark’s story, Scarborough continued:

And here in Ohio we have Mika, a family who endures this pain because their son is being lied to and reported on for political purposes.

The father, I think a month or two ago, spoke in front of the city council and said, please stop lying about my son. You don’t know anything about him. And if you did, you’d know the exact opposite of what he’s about to say right now, based on the wonderfully short life he lived.

Scarborough continued to attack Vance, and Trump accused Republicans of being “shameless” and “nasty” and claimed a change in standards in US politics.

But they don’t care. I can’t imagine these guys. I can’t imagine people’s parents begging them: ‘Please stop lying about our dead children, please stop. Let’s bury them in peace and move on.’ They won’t do this, Mika. They are not ashamed. They know better.

But they still continue to exploit the death of a little boy in Springfield and others and lie about it because they want to gain power. This is very clear. And if you think this is normal, you haven’t been in politics long enough, because I can tell you if this happened when I was in Congress, if this happened when Claire (McCaskill) was in the Senate, and if anyone did this. They would be excommunicated. Nobody would talk to them. They would be humiliated. Their leadership would say: ‘I’m sorry to the families, you take back the lie or you’ll be removed from the committees tomorrow. ‘You sit up.’

But there is no railing, Mika. There are no guardrails against the truth, there are no guardrails against honesty, there are no guardrails against the things that hold us together even in the most difficult of political times. And let me tell you it happened. Tip O’Neill And Ronald Reagan They couldn’t stand each other’s political philosophies, but they worked together. Bill Clinton And Newt Gingrich They couldn’t stand each other’s political philosophies and the situation turned ugly. They are still working together for the good of America. But for the first time in a hundred years, the budget is balanced four years in a row: There are no guardrails here, no binding ties, no civility. And I think integrity is on the ballot as well as democracy.

“They are causing pain to people on purpose,” Brzezinski said.

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