Morning Joe ripped into Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) for arguing that the country must end coronavirus lockdowns and restart the economy, even if it risks spreading the virus faster.

“The shut down slowed the spread of the virus at enormous cost, but it still spread,” Kennedy said in a Wednesday night interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. “When we end the shutdown, the virus is going to spread faster. That’s just a fact. And the American people understand that. So when we open up and we’re going to have to, and somebody’s got to make the call, we got to be smart about how we do it.”

Since Kennedy acknowledged that the shutdowns slowed down the virus but he wants the nation to reopen anyway, Joe Scarborough jumped right in and called it “one of the dumbest things I’ve actually heard him say, and he’s said so many stupid things over the past year, it’s hard to count.” After bashing President Donald Trump and the WHO for their mishandling of the crisis, Scarborough continued to take shots at Kennedy by saying he’s “playing stupid” on TV when he knows better than that.

“He may be acting like he’s dumb as dishwater on TV, but he knows without the social distancing, instead of 30,000 people dead, it’d probably be 300,000 people dead right now,” Scarborough said. “He also has to know that if we reopen the government too quickly, without the testing, if we reopen the economy without widespread testing, a lot more people are going to die.”

Scarborough concluded that Kennedy also has to know that small business owners will be hurt the most if the national economy reopens, just to close down again if another Covid-19 outbreak emerges.

“It’s just stupid and short-sighted,” he said, “and he knows it.”

Watch above, via MSNBC.

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