Joe Scarborough Calls John McCain And Ted Cruz 'Embarrassing' For 'Badgering' Chuck Hagel

MSNBC

"Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough on Friday slammed Republican Sens. John McCain and Ted Cruz, two of the Senators who had contentious exchanges with Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel during his confirmation hearing Thursday.

Scarborough called McCain and Cruz's handling of their time questioning Hagel "embarrassing" and suggested that their performances would hurt the Republican Party's standing with middle America.

"I'm sorry, out of [McCain's] exchange, it was not Chuck Hagel who looked bad," Scarborough said, conceding that Hagel was ill-prepared for the hearing.

"He wasn't prepared in a lot of ways that were concerning," Scarborough said. "But if the Republican Party thinks badgering an ill-prepared witness that way is going to help them with middle America, they don’t know middle America. They could have just let him talk around in circles, but it was ... it was embarrassing."

McCain and Hagel tangled over Hagel's opposition to the 2007 Iraq War troop surge, which Hagel opposed vehemently. McCain demanded a "yes or no" answer to the question of whether Hagel was wrong about the effectiveness of the surge.

Cruz, meanwhile, grilled Hagel over call-in interviews with Al Jazeera, attempting to paint Hagel as someone who agreed with callers' sentiments that Israel had committed "war crimes" in Lebanon and the U.S. is "the world's bully."

Watch the "Morning Joe" clip below, via Mediaite: