Scarborough criticizes GOP for attacking Harris as “DEI candidate”

FILE – In this Oct. 11, 2017, file photo, MSNBC television host Joe Scarborough answers questions from an audience at a forum at the John F. Kennedy School of Government on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The husband of a woman who died in an accident two decades ago in an office of then-Republican Rep. Joe Scarborough is demanding that Twitter delete President Donald Trump’s tweets claiming Scarborough murdered her. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, Archive)

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough accuses Republicans of attacking Vice President Harris as a “DEI candidate” now that she is the likely Democratic presidential nominee following President Biden’s exit from the race.

DEI stands for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that aim to increase diversity in the workplace and other institutions.

“Republicans are just total idiots attacking her as the ‘DEI candidate,'” Scarborough said Tuesday on “Morning Joe.” “And I’m telling you, 99 percent of Americans don’t even know what those letters stand for. But they know it’s probably racist.”

Democrats quickly rallied around Harris after she received a flood of endorsements and money following their boss’s exit from the campaign.

“When I look at the vice president, I see someone who is a generation younger than (former President Trump), and I think that will motivate a lot of people that the Democrats have to win this election,” Scarborough said.

Harris would be the first black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to be elected president.

Republican Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee attacked Harris as a “DEI employee” and referred to her as “our DEI vice president” in a post on social media platform X on Monday.

“The level of incompetence in Washington is at an all-time high. The media propped up this president, lied to the American people for three years, and then dumped him for our DEI vice president,” Burchett said in his post.

DEI programs often aim to promote fairness and equity in institutions and often seek to address historical injustices related to racism, homophobia and sexism. They have come under attack from the right, with Senator JD Vance, currently the Republican vice presidential nominee, introducing a bill last month to ban DEI programs and funding in the federal government.

“The DEI agenda is a destructive ideology that fuels hatred and racial division,” Vance said in an earlier statement. “It has no place in our federal government or anywhere else in our society. I am proud to introduce this legislation that would eradicate DEI from our federal bureaucracy by eliminating such programs and eliminating funding for DEI policies wherever they exist.”