'No passing the buck': MSNBC panel levels Texas officials over flood deaths
Reacting to Texas officials, ranging from local officials from Kerr County to Gov. Greg Abbott, ducking blame for the sequence of events that led to at least 120 dead and over 150 missing from a July 4th flash flood, the panel on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" claimed there needs to be a reckoning.
With Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring telling reporters he wants to look forward and not backward, and Abbott ranting that looking to find out who is to blame is for "losers," co-host Joe Scarborough claimed there is plenty of blame to spread around throughout the state and it is time for officials to step up and admit errors in judgment.
"There's really no passing of the buck because I'll tell you how things happened when I represented six counties in Northwest Florida," he told his co-hosts. "If there was a problem that people had in, you know, a hurricane coming, then, you know, and somebody saw a problem, somebody would talk to a county commissioner. The county commissioner would talk to me, would get funding for whatever needed to be taken care of, and it would be taken care of."
"I find it hard to believe two things right here," he added. "One, again, complaints about an antiquated warning system went unheeded for decade –– that's number one. Number two, that the local authorities, that the county authorities, that the state authorities allowed a children's camp to be built in a flood zone just a few years ago in a highly dangerous flood zone."
"So that's again, one more thing where the state of Texas failed miserably," he accused.
"Oddly, the other day, Governor Abbott of Texas, very defensive and bristling at reporters, saying this is the talk of losers to ask these kind of questions in a moment like this, while we're still looking for children now," co-host Willie Geist offered. "It's the talk of accountability and making sure this never happens again, and asking questions about how this was possible, how we got here, and preventing again this from ever, ever happening again to a group of little girls fighting for their lives in the middle of the night during a flood."
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