MSNBC’s hypocrisy knows no bounds. Especially on the topic of the Covid-19 pandemic and who's to blame for surging cases and rising deaths. During Monday's edition of Deadline: White House, fill-in host John Heilemann stepped up to the defense of President Biden, suggesting he's "not responsible for this." Meanwhile, in 2020, he blamed President Trump for everything.
In the segment in question, Heilemann was speaking with discussed topics ranging from long lines at testing centers in New York City, to an announcement from Moderna that their booster shot is more effective against the Omicron variant, to the Biden Administration’s bizarre statement threatening unvaccinated Americans.
Towards the end of the segment, Heilemann looked to Princeton Proffesor Eddie Glaude and made this stunningly hypocritical claim about Joe Biden’s handling of the pandemic:
So Eddie, here’s my question for you coming out of what Phil said before, right? Uh, it’s we know the president is not responsible for this, he didn’t cause Omicron, and they’re dealing with a – this pandemic which is metastasizing and mutating every minute that it’s on planet earth. It’s also the case that we know presidents get blamed for things that they don't deserve to get blamed for, they get praised for things that they don't deserve to get praised for. It's just how politics works. This is not a great moment for them.
"They’ve done in some ways a good job in this past year on this, and yet the sense of the unending pandemic is a political drag on Joe Biden," he added. "So I guess my question for you is, does Joe Biden need to get tougher? And if getting tougher, I mean tougher on the unvaccinated in particular. And if you think he needs to get tougher, what would that look like?"
According to Heilemann, the president, in this case, Joe Biden deserves no blame for the spread of the Omicron variant. On its face that would make sense. No president has the ability to completely prevent the spread of a contagious virus.
However, that isn’t what Heilemann thought about President Trump last year.
Here's what he said about Trump last year at the height of the pandemic in the spring of 2020:
The reality is, that in that period, in that lost two months really in January and February, the response -- what Donald Trump did and he directed his government to do in that period was woefully inadequate to the task of getting ready for this virus which was about to hit the country. That he knew was about to hit the country. That he was being told by people around him was about to hit the country. The consequences were laid out for him vividly by people like Peter Navaro and others and yet the reaction was incompetent and inadequate and I don't think it's actually an overstatement to say that Donald Trump has -- there are tens of thousands of people who will die in the country, or some of them have already died more are still going to die because of Donald Trump’s incompetence and lack of leadership.
It’s clear that John Heileman is more interested in playing political games than he is in covering the pandemic. If you blame a president of one party for not stopping the spread of a virus, you need to use the same standard and blame the other as well.
Or you can stop playing political games and just report the news. Something tells us Heileman won’t though.
This hypocritical segment was brought to you by BMW. Their contact information is linked so you can tell them about the biased news they fund.
To read the relevant transcript of the segment click “expand”:
Deadline: White House
12/20/2021
4:16:41 PMJOHN HEILEMAN: So Eddie, here’s my question for you coming out of what Phil said before, right? Uh, it’s we know the president is not responsible for this, he didn’t cause Omicron, and they’re dealing with a – this pandemic which is metastasizing and mutating every minute that it’s on planet earth. It’s also the case that we know presidents get blamed for things that they don't deserve to get blamed for, they get praised for things that they don't deserve to get praised for. It's just how politics works. This is not a great moment for them.
They’ve done in some ways, a good job in this past year on this, and yet the sense of the unending pandemic is a political drag on, on Joe Biden. So I guess my question for you is, does Joe Biden need to get tougher? And if getting tougher, I mean tougher on the unvaccinated in particular. And if you think he needs to get tougher, what would that look like?
Deadline: White House
4/8/2020
4:30:46 PMHEILEMAN: The reality is, that in that period, in that lost two months really in January and February, the response -- what Donald Trump did and he directed his government to do in that period was woefully inadequate to the task of getting ready for this virus which was about to hit the country. That he knew was about to hit the country. That he was being told by people around him was about to hit the country. The consequences were laid out for him vividly by people like Peter Navaro and others and yet the reaction was incompetent and inadequate and I don't think it's actually an overstatement to say that Donald Trump has -- there are tens of thousands of people who will die in the country, or some of them have already died more are still going to die because of Donald Trump’s incompetence and lack of leadership.
