Joe Scarborough Blames Gov. Greg Abbot for Deadly Weekend: ‘There is a Sickness in the State Texas and It Starts at the Very Top’

Following a gruesomely deadly weekend in the state of Texas, Joe Scarborough was not afraid to point the finger of blame at its Governor, Greg Abbott.

On Saturday, a gunman opened fire outside a shopping mall in Allen, Texas, killing nine innocent citizens and leaving roughly half a dozen more clinging to their lives in critical condition. On Sunday morning, seven migrants were killed when an SUV plowed into them outside a Brownsville, Texas, migrant shelter. It is yet not clear if the driver of the SUV lost control or mowed down the migrants intentionally.

The Dallas Morning News editorial board published an open letter to Governor Abbott, imploring him to act on the apparent spike in gun violence in the Lonestar state, writing:

There is nothing conservative about refusing to acknowledge evidence or give voice to the true nature of a problem. The people who are dead today are not dead because a twisted and evil soul walked among them. They are dead because that person was able to obtain a weapon so powerful and with such high capacity that even the braved and fastest response of law enforcement could not save their lives.

That is what you most speak to if you want to truly lead this state. You most speak to the terrible imbalance that you and Republican leaders have created between the individual liberty of nearly unrestricted ownership of the most powerful rifles and guns versus the increasing decline in society’s ability to function without constant fear of violent death.

Co-host Mika Brzezinksi cited the opinion piece before Scarborough took the baton and referenced what he deemed to be regrettable comments by Abbott over a previous mass shooting in which he labeled the victims “illegal immigrants” as if they were less than.

“You have a group of migrants being run down and killed here.” Scarborough opened. “The U.S. has by far the highest child and teen firearm mortality rate among poor countries. Our little children are being slaughtered. And Greg Abbott has nothing to say about it. He just wants to change the subject. But after Greg Abbott cynically, cruelly looked at a rampage inside of a home where children, a child, and his mother and family were slaughtered by an AR-15 and, yes, an illegal immigrant, the question is how did he get that AR-15?”

“The governor cynically and cruelly focused on the immigration status of these poor people and that little boy that were slaughtered and called them illegal immigrants right off the top, just inhumane. But you wanted to focus on illegal immigrants,” the Morning Joe host continued.

“So is it any surprise that we have migrants being run over with this sort of lack of leadership, the sort of cynicism, this sort of hatred in Texas?” he asked. “Is it any surprise that we have migrants? On Sunday morning, some of them probably going to church, getting run over while they’re waiting for a bus or that we have a neo-Nazi sympathizers, possible white supremacists going to malls to gun down other people.”

“There is a sickness in the state of Texas, and that sickness starts at the very top with Greg Abbott, who refuses to protect little children in the state of Texas, whether it’s at school or whether it’s his church or whether it’s at shopping malls or even inside their own homes.”

Watch above via MSNBC.

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