Morning Joe calls out GOP senators for provoking the next Timothy McVeigh with lies about IRS agentsMSNBC's Joe Scarborough blasted Republican lawmakers for putting a target on IRS agents' backs with incendiary rhetoric.
The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act allocates nearly $80 billion to the Internal Revenue Service, and some leading Republicans have spread false claims that 87,000 armed agents will be hired target middle-class taxpayers -- and the "Morning Joe" host called out their lies as dangerous.
"If you are an IRS agent, you're far less safe today than you were a couple days ago," Scarborough said. "[Sen.] Chuck Grassley went on 'Fox and Friends' and suggested IRS agents would come with AR-15s loaded to people's homes in Iowa. It's extraordinarily reckless. Kevin McCarthy, the head of the Republican Party in the House, is saying the same thing, spreading the conspiracy theories."
"This is -- you know, this sort of talk is what led to Oklahoma City," Scarborough added. "It's what led to Timothy McVeigh. After it happens, it's too late to pull back and say, 'Oh, let's be responsible,' after it happens."
Scarborough said that sort of talk had already motivated an Ohio man to attack an FBI field office near Cincinnati, which led to his fatal shooting hours later by police, in response to the search warrant executed at Donald Trump's private Mar-A-Lago resort.
"This is, again, this is what we were warming about the inflammatory rhetoric about the search, the legal search," Scarborough said. "We kept warning. Sure enough, a guy tries to break into an FBI office, field office in Ohio, break through the glass with a nail gun, shatter the glass, then go in and slaughter FBI agents with his AR-15. It's too late, Republicans, after the next Oklahoma City happens. That's why I had said, Chuck Grassley, I mean, somebody, maybe Mitch [McConnell] can't say something to Chuck Grassley about this, but somebody in the Republican Party needs to pull back on this, just like Mike Pence pulled back on the radical, reckless talk regarding FBI agents and defunding the FBI and calling them the gestapo."
"Again, I've just got to say this, this doesn't happen just online, contained online with some crackpots," he added. "I've got mainstream Americans, two in the same day, talking about civil war and revolution and overthrowing the U.S. government because IRS agents are coming to their house with AR-15s. i mean, this is the stakes."
Watch the video below: