Scarborough: Reid Uses 'McCarthyism' to Attack Koch Brothers

It's "McCarthyism" for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to call David and Charles Koch un-American, talk show host Joe Scarborough said Thursday, citing the billions of dollars in donations the brothers have contributed to the arts and medicine.

"Just [to] say that the Koch brothers are against everything that is good about America, and calling them 'un-American?' That, by definition, is McCarthyism," Scarborough, a former Republican Congressman, said on his MSNBC "Morning Joe" program.

"It's overlooking what [David Koch] has done for this city for cancer research, for the arts. Could you tell people that don't just live and breathe politics what this 'un-American' man has done in New York City alone?" he Scarborough said.

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Speaking on the Senate floor last month, Reid said Obamacare ads by Americans for Prosperity were "untrue, but they're being told all over America." The Koch brothers, who Reid said were "trying to buy America," back the group.

Reid intensified his attack Tuesday in Tweets where he called the brothers "un-American," and said "Senate Republicans are addicted to Koch."

Scarborough said that President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 "received more big money from Wall Street than any candidate in the history of American politics." He said it was misleading for Democrats to claim Republicans were the only party funded by big money donors.

"You do understand this is a misleading ad coming from the Democratic Party, that received more big money from Wall Street than any party in the history of American politics," he said.

Scarborough argued the Koch brothers were funding ads about Obamacare, a subject on which most of Americans were in agreement.

"When Harry Reid says it's un-American and this, that, the other. Actually, the majority of Americans are with the Koch brothers on this issue that they are driving home in 2014," he said.

McCarthyism is a term coined following the anti-communist efforts of Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. It has since come to describe an attack on a person's loyalty without evidence to support the accusation.