MSNBC's Chuck Todd began Thursday's MTP Daily by giving a lengthy on the state of the pandemic where he accused the government, which presumably means President Trump and the rest of the White House, for being responsible for more deaths than World War II.
The genesis of Todd's spiel was a report that came out that said an advisor within HHS recommended trying to achieve herd immunity. Of course, this advice was not followed, but Todd still used it to claim Trump was more concerned about how economic damage would affect his campaign and that "Getting to the bottom of the depths of the political interference in our country’s public health agencies is obviously of major importance."
After quoting a New York Times article that alleged further interference in health guidelines, Todd claimed, "Folks, the president's response alone to this pandemic will be remembered as one of the biggest failures of government leadership in our nation's history and while the speed of the vaccine is rightfully being recognized as a medical marvel, there have nonetheless been cascading failures across our government and from our elected leaders."
Neither Todd nor any of his fellow journalists who have made similar claims have ever said what Trump should have done or how he could prevent people from getting sick without simultaneously crashing the economy. "Take it more seriously" is not a policy and over 90% of Americans claim to be good mask-wearers.
Still, Todd then moved past Pearl Harbor and 9/11 analogies and found a new one when he declared, "It's resulted in more deaths so far than the number of Americans who died in the battle -- in battle during World War II."
Todd's insistence on deaths directly attributed to battle deaths is misleading as total military deaths, according to the National World War II Museum, were 416,800.
Concluding his remarks, Todd declared that "the public deserves a full and independent accounting of what happened. We've had plenty of commissions that do this and do this well."
But, why would Todd want an "independent accounting" or a commission when he seems to already have made up his mind?
This segment was sponsored by Citi.
Here is a transcript for the December 17 show:
MTP Daily
MSNBC
1:02 PM ETCHUCK TODD: Getting to the bottom of the depths of the political interference in our country’s public health agencies is obviously of major importance. On that issue, the CDC's former chief of staff and his top deputy are opening up about how the agency was sidelined in part by political allies of the president. In an interview with the New York Times they said, quote, “everyone wants to describe the day that the light switch flipped and the CDC was sidelined. It didn't happen that way. It was more of like a hand grasping something. And it slowly closes, closes, and closes until you realize that, middle of the summer, it has a complete grasp on everything at the CDC.” Folks, the president's response alone to this pandemic will be remembered as one of the biggest failures of government leadership in our nation's history and while the speed of the vaccine is rightfully being recognized as a medical marvel, there have nonetheless been cascading failures across our government and from our elected leaders. It's resulted in more deaths so far than the number of Americans who died in the battle -- in battle during World War II. The public deserves a full and independent accounting of what happened. We've had plenty of commissions that do this and do this well.
