While touting recent high-profile endorsements for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, on Wednesday, MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle argued that in order to counter the “daily clown show” of President Trump’s coronavirus briefings, the former Vice President should establish a “shadow government” and hold his own daily press conferences on the pandemic.
Talking to former Obama White House aide Jim Messina about his former boss and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren both officially endorsing Biden, Ruhle asked: “How big is this?” Messina ranted: “It’s a really big contrast, right? When you see President Trump with his erratic leadership and his daily, you know, clown show press conferences, to have real, upstanding leaders like Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren talk about Joe Biden in personal terms, the kind of leader he would be.”
Ruhle repeated her liberal guest’s nasty attack on the White House briefings and urged Biden do more to undermine the administration’s pandemic response:
Then do they need to do it in a bigger way? What did you just call it, the President’s daily clown show, that’s his press briefing. Should Joe Biden be counter-programming that? Should he be creating his own shadow government, shadow cabinet, shadow S.W.A.T. team and getting up there at a podium every night saying, “Here’s the crisis we’re in, here’s what we need to do to address this”?
Messina noted that Biden has “done some of that,” but did caution that such campaign efforts “can look political.”
In the early days of the pandemic, MSNBC hoped the health crisis would be a political “gift” for Biden. However, in the weeks that followed, many on the left-wing cable channel began to worry that Trump’s daily pressers were improving the President’s approval ratings and that Biden was “having difficulty” getting his campaign message out.
Here is a transcript of Ruhle’s April 15 exchange with Messina:
9:52 AM ET
STEPHANIE RUHLE: We’ve got some breaking news here. Just moments ago, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren posted a video on Twitter officially endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden for president, saying “Empathy matters, and in this moment of crisis, it is more important than ever.” This comes just one day after President Obama officially endorsed his former VP. I want to bring in Jim Messina, he was deputy chief of staff under President Obama. He was also the campaign manager of President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. Jim joins me now. Jim, your reaction to the timing and the tone of both of these endorsements. How big is this?
JIM MESSINA: It’s a really big contrast, right? When you see President Trump with his erratic leadership and his daily, you know, clown show press conferences, to have real, upstanding leaders like Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren talk about Joe Biden in personal terms, the kind of leader he would be. That contrast is really important right now and it’s a contrast that the Biden campaign is going to bank on going forward.
RUHLE: Then do they need to do it in a bigger way? What did you just call it, the President’s daily clown show, that’s his press briefing. Should Joe Biden be counter-programming that? Should he be creating his own shadow government, shadow cabinet, shadow S.W.A.T. team and getting up there at a podium every night saying, “Here’s the crisis we’re in, here’s what we need to do to address this”?
MESSINA: Well, he’s done some of that, right, he’s released the most comprehensive plan about what to do in this COVID crisis. If it was a plan Donald Trump was implementing right now, we’d all be okay. So Biden’s been very specific about what he should do. As to, you know, his role in all of this, it’s tough, right. He’s not the leader yet. It can look political. You know, he’s doing what I think he should be doing, which is consolidating his base and getting ready for the general election. I think that’s what he can do right now. But I think he’s been very specific about his actions and what he would do as president of the United States. And, you know, it’s a time that none of us have ever gone through. How do you campaign in a time when you can’t go see voters? I mean, it’s something that everyone’s struggling with and obviously he has the biggest challenge ahead of him and we’ll see what steps he takes going forward to kind of reinvent a modern American campaign with about 200 days left.
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