Washington Post reporter (and PBS Washington Week host) Robert Costa joined MSNBC Live guest host Kasie Hunt on Monday to talk about the coronavirus. After mentioning that two Republican members of Congress, Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Paul Gosar are self-quarantining out of an abundance of caution after someone at CPAC tested positive for the virus. Costa claimed that only now are conservatives taking the threat of COVID-19 seriously.
Hunt began by asking Costa about how Congress and the White House are prepared to address any economic challenges. She declared that President Trump's re-election may hinge on working with Democrats to pass some temporary version of Democratic policy wishes:
KASIE HUNT: Some of these things that Schumer and Pelosi are proposing now, you know, paid sick leave, extensions of unemployment insurance, are policy proposals that normally wouldn't fly with Republicans. But on the flipside, this president may really need the Democratic Speaker of the House, especially heading into a re-election, if he's worried about the economy. How does that cut -- what are you hearing from your sources about how they're going to negotiate these differences?
Costa replied by first talking by repeating a claim that was debunked over a week ago, "It's a fluid situation because it was just a few weeks ago that at the CPAC conference you had many conservatives calling this entire coronavirus situation a hoax."
He claimed that only, "Now that has the virus has hit some attendees in terms of their -- them being affected by the person there who had it, you have conservatives and Republicans talking about this in a new way." The White House task force on the matter was created on January 29, back when MSNBC was still obsessed with impeachment. and a month before CPAC.
According to Costa, these new efforts may include "some kind of legislation that would address infrastructure in terms of hospitals, military preparedness if that was necessary, if the National Guard were ever to be called up, and also economic shoring up of industries, the cruise industry, the airline industry, should travel come to a halt."
