‘Morning Joe’ Rips Into ‘Callous’ Texas Governor for ‘Shameful’ Tweet Calling Shooting Victims ‘Illegal Immigrants’ (Video)

MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” knocked Texas governor Greg Abbott for a Sunday tweet in which he referred to the five victims of Friday’s shooting in Cleveland, Texas, as “illegal immigrants.”

Co-host Joe Scarborough said that the governor’s response to a “sad, sad moment for our country, a tragic moment out of Texas” was “hateful” and “callous.”

“I’ve announced a $50K reward for info on the criminal who killed 5 illegal immigrants Friday,” Abbott wrote. “Also directed #OperationLoneStar to be on the lookout. I continue working with state & local officials to ensure all available resources are deployed to respond.”

The victims have been identified as 25 year-old Sonia Argentina Guzman; 21-year-old and permanent U.S. resident Diana Velazquez Alvarado; 31-year-old Julisa Molina Rivera; 18-year-old Jonathan Casarez; and 9-year-old Daniel Enrique Laso. The suspect, identified as Francesco Oropesa, remains on the run.

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On Monday’s “Morning Joe” panel, political commentator Charlie Sykes accused Abbott of feeling “the need to label them in the most divisive way he can.”

“We know what the politics of Greg Abbott are, we know what the politics of Texas Republicans are when it comes to the gun issue and immigration,” Sykes added. “So for him to connect the dots there takes just one more data point of the cruelty, the brutality. I mean, I’m not telling you anything when I say that for many of these politicians, the cruelty is the point, and that he felt the need to insert that line into that particular moment just reminds us of that.”

That’s when Scarborough said that Abbott felt “the need to be hateful and to be callous after a mother tries to shield her [eight]-year-old child.”

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“Both are shot in the head, and instead of even a ‘hope and prayers’ tweet, he feels like he has to stamp a label on the dead bodies: ‘Illegal immigrant.’ Just think about the mindset of that,” Scarborough continued. “A guy who probably runs around, you know, maybe he’s part of this Christian nationalist movement, but what would Jesus do? You know, you don’t have to be a Bible scholar to know, not that. What a dreadful, shameful thing from the governor from a state that brought us Uvalde. You saw what happened in Sandy Hook. It just shattered the country. And yet in Congress, they did nothing … You can go through Parkland. There was movement on guns in Florida after that tragedy, but then, yeah, Uvalde. You’ve already got some Republicans in Congress to do something, but not enough. The carnage continues. Little children continue to get slaughtered by weapons designed for war. And still, the Republican Party does nothing.”

Watch the full “Morning Joe” segment in the video above.

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