Joe Scarborough to Thomas Friedman: Carbon Tax Won’t Stop ISIS

Scarborough Scoffs at Thomas Friedman's Notion That ISIS Can Be Stopped With a Carbon Tax (NewsBusters)

Abraham Maslow once suggested that if your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If a carbon tax isn't the only tool on Thomas Friedman's belt, it's perhaps the most prominent one.  So sure enough, when Friedman, as per his New York Times column of yesterday, looks at the dual threat to the United States posed by ISIS and Putin, his solution is—you guessed it—a carbon tax, coupled with freeing up US oil exports.

On today's Morning Joe, commenting on Friedman's proposal, Joe Scarborough struggled to stay respectful, but wound up citing Zbigniew Brzezinski's sarcastic response in a similar situation: "I remember a couple of years ago we had a Pulitzer Prize winner on here saying it's so horrible that the Bush administration is doing this and that because the Pakistanis, they just want to be like us. And Dr. Brzezinski started laughing that sort of Dr. No laugh and he said "you are a fool. They do not want to be like us. They want to be the opposite of us." Scarborough went on to observe that the only thing that will solve ISIS is killing them and blowing up their equipment.