Just before midnight Eastern Tuesday into Wednesday, various MSNBC guests reminded all of us that, despite the unprecedently grim state of the world, the liberal media will still act terribly and ensure NewsBusters will continue to be flush with content. Between deeming President Trump incompetent, comparing him leading America through the crisis to William Shatner flying a plane, there was a lot to go through in just 15 minutes.
As you'll see below, Reid's choice to invoke Shatner was a poor choice from a factual standpoint.
AM Joy host Joy Reid spoke up at 11:44 p.m. Eastern, moving away from Tuesday’s primary results to spouting off about her hatred of both Trump and the right. She ascertained that “[p]eople are really coming to grips” and “reckoning with” “the incredible cost of having elected a man like Donald Trump to be President” with one example being Joe Biden’s comeback.
Reid then ruled that Trump “has no capacity to lead this country” period and him being President is akin to “William Shatner to be an airline pilot because he was James T. Kirk and he piloted The Enterprise.”
Ah, so just like how Reid pretends to be a serious cable news host and/or journalist!
But wait, there's more! Once this post originally went live, South Bend, Indiana radio talk show host Casey Hendrickson pointed out that Shatner is actually a pilot. Therefore, Reid's analogy isn't exactly the one she wanted to convey. So for Trump supporters, it was a good comparison, Joy!
After falsely attacking the administration’s response to the disbanding of a White House pandemic position, Reid complained that “he doesn’t understand government” and that the left should be in control because “if you don’t believe in government, you cannot govern and someone like Donald Trump as President is absurd in this sort of situation.”
Therefore, she opined that Biden has been succeeding because “he is a man of government” that “understands and respects” it.
A few minutes later, MSNBC political analyst and former Obama aide David Plouffe defended the Biden campaign pivoting to the general election because, if Donald Trump wins reelection, “we literally may not survive” as a country.
In the hour’s final segment, Lyin’ Brian Williams brought on liberal historian Jon Meacham and, at first, things were actually fairly positive and uplifting (click “expand”):
WILLIAMS: I was thinking about you today because if we’re not careful, people are going to start reading history books. People are issuing kind of vague exhortations about all this country has been able to do and pull off over the years, most of it in the name of warfare and I was thinking about Willow Run, which was once an auto assembly line, but once it was converted, you can make an argument it helped us win the Second World War by producing a new B-24 every hour. Talk about that part of the American spirit that we haven’t tapped into to make a single train in the last 40 years.
MEACHAM: That’s exactly right and, you know, Franklin Roosevelt would pick those numbers off the top of his head. He would say, we’re going to have --- we’re going to make 10,000 planes a week, and I think it was Sam Rosenman, his speechwriter said, you know, where did you get that number, sir? He said, I made it up. But we did it and I --- we’re in a situation --- I think it’s a little bit more like Britain in World War II in that we are all truly in this, and we’re actually combatants. You know, the Luftwaffe was coming after the Brits. This virus is coming after us. It’s a full mobilization. It’s a civilian struggle and --- really we would have had this in the Cold War if things had gone in a --- in a tragic direction and the great news is when we actually put our minds to something, we’ve nearly always done it and I think a part of it is the spirit as you say. Part of it is this idea that we are --- that the government itself, America is about us. It’s about we, the people and the great sense, it seems to me, the great hope here is that if you give us a challenge and if you’re straight with us, you know, give us to it straight, we’ll do what it takes. That was the lesson of Franklin Roosevelt. It was the lesson of the Cold War. And I --- warfare, you’re right, that is the analogy we fall back on because that’s the fullest mobilization and here we’re all in this and we have a direct stake.
As usual, their liberal itch had to be scratched with Williams kvetching about the President insisting that he’s “always felt [the coronavirus] was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”
Meacham replied: “[W]e have to put the President to the side here and hope that the government as it’s constituted can, in fact, deliver what we need.”
Talking about “moral leadership,” Meacham closed by hailing the results of Democratic primaries over the last few weeks as proof that the country wants Biden to win (and thus ignoring the surge in GOP votes):
At this point, it’s --- the last couple of days have felt better in that regard. The presidency, as Franklin Roosevelt once said, is not an engineering job. It is preeminently a place of moral leadership and I think the great lesson tonight of the primaries is that America wants a president who reminds them of other presidents and there was a novelty factor with the incumbent. But the show, which was always going to wear thin, is now wearing thin at a moment where he treats this as reality TV, but this is reality for the rest of us.
UPDATE, 6:31 p.m. Eastern. This piece has been updated thanks to an eagle-eyed reader who noted that Shatner is, in fact, a real-life pilot and thus rendering Reid's slam fake news.
To see the relevant MSNBC transcript from March 17, click “expand.”
MSNBC’s Decision 2020
March 17, 2020
11:44 p.m. EasternJOY REID: But --- and if I could just say, you know, just on a kind of a bigger picture sense, Brian, you know, I think a lot of voters today and just people that I’ve been talking to and really spent a lot of time talking to people in Florida. People are really coming to grips with the incredible cost of having elected a man like Donald Trump to be President. I think what’s helping and what’s driving this Biden surge is that people are reckoning with that cost. You know, people sort of felt with Barack Obama as the backdrop, that they sort of had all of these options, you know, that you could sort of make all these choices about going to iconoclasm or do you really want Hillary? You know, I don’t think she’s good enough for me and people made those choices with Obama as the backdrop. With Trump here, this was like hiring William Shatner to be an airline pilot because he was James T. Kirk and he piloted The Enterprise. This man has no capacity to lead this country. He fired the pandemic office and then he lied and said he didn’t. Now the video is out showing, yes, he did. He doesn’t understand government. He’s got a guy working for him like Steve Mnuchin, who thinks you can do a payroll tax cut. Folks I’m talking to in the restaurant industry, they’re going to have to lay their people off. If you aren’t getting a paycheck, a payroll tax cut does absolutely nothing for you. What’s the point of that? So I think that the Republican Party also has to really start to rethink. If you --- if you don’t believe in government, you cannot govern and someone like Donald Trump as President is absurd in this sort of situation. I think Biden is benefiting from the fact that he is a man of government. He is a man who understands and respects government.
(….)
11:46 p.m. Eastern
DAVID PLOUFFE: It’s one of the most consequential elections in American history if not the most. It was already the case before the coronavirus. So, you know, when Joe Biden --- he can’t spend in his campaign, can’t spend a minute or a dime in Wisconsin, in Pennsylvania, in Ohio, which suggest --- polls suggest that could be competitive. That’s not focused on the general election and, you know, there’s building the campaign. There’s deciding which battleground states you’re going to target. There’s obviously being the one voice, narrating Trump’s mishandling of this crisis, but the American people are also going to focus on once we get past the immediate health crisis, this is going to be an economic catastrophe, one of the worst this country may have ever faced and so Joe Biden’s going to have to provide answers for people, not just about how he’s going to triage the moment, but how we’re going to rebuild our economy. So it’s irresponsible not to begin focusing on the general election. You can do it in a respectful way. That work has to happen right now because what’s clear over the last few weeks is if you give Donald Trump a second term, my goodness, we literally may not survive it.
(….)
11:54 p.m. Eastern
BRIAN WILLIAMS: I was thinking about you today because if we’re not careful, people are going to start reading history books. People are issuing kind of vague exhortations about all this country has been able to do and pull off over the years, most of it in the name of warfare and I was thinking about Willow Run, which was once an auto assembly line, but once it was converted, you can make an argument it helped us win the Second World War by producing a new B-24 every hour. Talk about that part of the American spirit that we haven’t tapped into to make a single train in the last 40 years.
JON MEACHAM: That’s exactly right and, you know, Franklin Roosevelt would pick those numbers off the top of his head. He would say, we’re going to have --- we’re going to make 10,000 planes a week, and I think it was Sam Rosenman, his speechwriter said, you know, where did you get that number, sir? He said, I made it up. But we did it and I --- we’re in a situation --- I think it’s a little bit more like Britain in World War II in that we are all truly in this, and we’re actually combatants. You know, the Luftwaffe was coming after the Brits. This virus is coming after us. It’s a full mobilization. It’s a civilian struggle and --- really we would have had this in the Cold War if things had gone in a --- in a tragic direction and the great news is when we actually put our minds to something, we’ve nearly always done it and I think a part of it is the spirit as you say. Part of it is this idea that we are --- that the government itself, America is about us. It’s about we, the people and the great sense, it seems to me, the great hope here is that if you give us a challenge and if you’re straight with us, you know, give us to it straight, we’ll do what it takes. That was the lesson of Franklin Roosevelt. It was the lesson of the Cold War. And I --- warfare, you’re right, that is the analogy we fall back on because that’s the fullest mobilization and here we’re all in this and we have a direct stake.
WILLIAMS: But here’s the asterisk. Everything today is through a political filter and as I said earlier, the President spoke these words with a straight face today: “I always felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” Jon, did we just not live through the last couple weeks?
MEACHAM: Well, he has his own reality field, and you and I have talked before. To some extent, we have to put the President to the side here and hope that the government as it’s constituted can, in fact, deliver what we need. At this point, it’s --- the last couple of days have felt better in that regard. The presidency, as Franklin Roosevelt once said, is not an engineering job. It is preeminently a place of moral leadership and I think the great lesson tonight of the primaries is that America wants a president who reminds them of other presidents and there was a novelty factor with the incumbent. But the show, which was always going to wear thin, is now wearing thin at a moment where he treats this as reality TV, but this is reality for the rest of us.
