MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough pointed out the hypocrisy of what he called the “socialists that nobody’s talking about” after the Commerce Department announced it plans to take a minority equity stake in seven companies that are developing semiconductor technologies. The “Morning Joe” co-host slammed members of his former party for criticizing a “fringe” group of Democrats embracing socialism while they’re the ones actively “practicing” it.
On Wednesday, the department announced it had signed “letters of intent to provide $874 million in federal incentives under the CHIPS and Science Act” to seven companies on the condition that the government would receive equity in return.
Scarborough said the move was akin to “Donald Trump nationalizing large parts of the tech sector,” and he warned “socialists are taking over some of the most important companies in America’s economy.”
The MS NOW co-host said there was “great irony” in a Republican administration carrying out such an action and noted it isn’t the only evidence the party has strayed from its limited government roots.
“You have Republicans — small government Republicans — running up the biggest deficits, the biggest debt ever, crippling this country. Not future generations; they’re going to cripple this generation with the biggest budgets ever, the biggest spending ever, the biggest socialized schemes ever,” Scarborough said.
“What have conservatives like myself said forever about this?” he asked. “The government should not pick winners and losers. The government should allow everybody an equal opportunity for their small business, for their startup, for their company to succeed. But Republicans, in the most socialist of ways, are picking winners and losers now.”
As Scarborough explained, this isn’t the first time the Trump administration has interfered in the private sector. In August 2025, the president announced the government would receive a 10% stake in Intel in exchange for federal investment.
“First, they practice socialism with Intel,” he said. “And now the same thing here, ‘Oh yeah, you can be involved in the CHIPS Act, but you’ve got to engage in a little act of socialism with us and let us take over stakes in your company.’” He added, “Now you have these same Trump socialism schemes spread as Republicans seize control of seven more private companies.”
The “Morning Joe” co-host said the administration’s actions show the hypocrisy of Republicans, who have used the rise of democratic socialists to hit Democrats ahead of the midterm elections.
“They point at a radical fringe group in the Democratic Party and claim, ‘Oh, this is what Democrats are doing. They’re socialists,’ and yet you actually have Republicans practicing socialism,” he said.
Scarborough said the plan deserves bipartisan condemnation.
“This is outrageous. Every Republican, every Democrat, every small government conservative should be against this,” he said.
You can watch Scarborough’s full commentary in the clip at the top of the page.
The post Joe Scarborough: Trump’s tech takeover shows it’s GOP ‘practicing socialism,’ not Democrats appeared first on MS NOW.
