MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell and the Washington Post's Philip Rucker decided on Monday to place the blame for the current pandemic on President Trump and conservative red states by conveniently ignoring all contrary evidence that would suggest that partisan affiliation has nothing to do with the current health crisis.
Mitchell began by hyping a lengthy Post article that provided the segment's source material. Mitchell summed the article up as, "a searing account of the failures of the Trump Administration to take COVID-19 seriously as the virus made its way from China into the U.S. For more than two months, time was squandered, warnings ignored."
She then continued the media's inglorious record of claiming that Trump called the virus a hoax, "President Trump dismissing the virus as a hoax initially, only to lash out at the press and boast about his social media following." Bringing Rucker into the conversation, she blamed red states for the level of COVID-19 cases, "The President is still resisting, despite pressure, and we now see part of your reporting was a Neil Newhouse-- Republican polling-- that there were a number of people in red states early on who didn't heed the warnings to socially distance because they believed the President's false comments."
Despite Mitchell's claims, it was not just red states early on. On February 24, Nancy Pelosi urged San Francisco residents to visit Chinatown, while it took Bill de Blasio until March 15 to finally shut down New York City schools.
Rucker also did not point to such counter-examples, but instead claimed, "there was dysfunction and denial going back 70 days. And it wasn't just from the president. It was throughout the federal government, although it was exacerbated by the president's own leadership failing and by his reluctance to believe what the experts were telling him, his reluctance to understand and appreciate the warnings that were coming to his desk in the presidential daily brief of intelligence."
Speaking of experts, roughly 70 days ago the experts that Trump has relied on most this crisis say the response was hampered by bad information coming from China.
Ignoring that countries around the world are struggling with this virus, Rucker claimed Trump could have stopped it from getting this bad, "It created failures in the testing system, but also failures in getting this country prepared and understanding what was happening in China and later in other countries, including Italy, so that we could avert the sort of catastrophe we see playing out right now in New York."
Here is a transcript for the April 6 show:
MSNBC
Andrea Mitchell Reports
12:48 PM ET
ANDREA MITCHELL: Well, denial and dysfunction have been the two words of the day, words that are used by the Washington Post in a searing account of the failures of the Trump Administration to take COVID-19 seriously as the virus made its way from China into the U.S. For more than two months, time was squandered, warnings ignored. President Trump dismissing the virus as a hoax initially, only to lash out at the press and boast about his social media following. And to this day, insisting that every American has access to a test. Joining me now is Phil Rucker, White House Bureau Chief for the Washington Post, MSNBC political analyst and part of the team, the Post team along with Ashley Parker and others put together this extraordinary 7,000-word piece, I think, over the weekend. Let's talk about this Phil, because the president is still resisting, despite pressure, and we now see part of your reporting was a Neil Newhouse-- Republican polling-- that there were a number of people in red states early on who didn't heed the warnings to socially distance because they believed the president's false comments.
PHILIP RUCKER: Yeah, Andrea. The reporting is extraordinary. By the way, I was not part of that team, but I'm very proud of my colleagues who were. But they found that there was dysfunction and denial going back 70 days. And it wasn't just from the president. It was throughout the federal government, although it was exacerbated by the president's own leadership failing and by his reluctance to believe what the experts were telling him, his reluctance to understand and appreciate the warnings that were coming to his desk in the presidential daily brief of intelligence. And it created failures in the testing system, but also failures in getting this country prepared and understanding what was happening in China and later in other countries, including Italy, so that we could avert the sort of catastrophe we see playing out right now in New York.
