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Joe Scarborough condemned some conservatives and right-leaning websites for trying to turn Trayvon Martin's death into a political cause on Friday's "Morning Joe."
Martin was unarmed when he was shot dead by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in late February. His death and the local police department's failure to arrest Zimmerman have taken the country by storm. Scarborough has spoken out demanding the shooter's arrest.
On Friday, he excoriated some conservative websites for defending Zimmerman and questioning Martin's innocence. He said that he found their behavior "disgusting."
"Why is it that some on the right are actually taking this up as a cause?" Scarborough asked. "As National Review said almost immediately after it happened, this has nothing to do with gun rights, this has nothing to do with the Second Amendment, this has nothing to do with stand your ground laws, this has nothing to do with the NRA. This has everything to do with a guy that's trying to play security cop, who is unhinged, who chased down and shot a 17-year-old kid armed with Skittles and iced tea.'"
Scarborough warned that conservative sites should follow the National Review and "not take this up as a cause." He took issue with their portrayal of Martin in particular.
He said, "some racist websites, but also sadly some fairly mainstream websites are actually going into Trayvon Martin’s social media pages, be it Twitter or MySpace, and they're trying to find ominous looking pictures while skipping over pictures of him holding up a birthday cake smiling, him fishing with his dad, him standing outside proudly of his home dressed in a tux ready to go to prom."
"This is beneath contempt," Scarborough railed. "These people on the far right are being fools to try to make this a political issue.”
"Some out there are marginalizing themselves, making fools of themselves," he continued. He speculated that they took issue with President Obama's remarks about Martin's death. "I guess in their warped, twisted, distorted, political worldview, that makes this dead 17-year-old boy — who was kept in the morgue for three days before they even notified his parents of his whereabouts — I guess that makes it okay?" he said.
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