You could call it a slip of the tongue. But it was deeply revealing of the fervor with which Joe Scarborough, and the MSM at large, are determined to condemn President Trump regarding the coronavirus.
Scarborough opened today's Morning Joe by reciting a litany of the overly-optimistic statements President Trump has made about the virus. Scarborough then said:
"Yesterday, in Donald Trump's hometown [New York], 1,000 Americans died of the coronavirus."
Realizing his mistake, Scarborough stutteringly attempted to correct himself: "uh, uh, uh: a thousand total deaths, we went over yesterday. And in his hometown of New York City, 80 people died."
Even Scarborough's correction was misleading. The 1,000 total deaths since the beginning of the outbreak are for the entire country, not just NYC. Scarborough also claimed that 1,000 "Americans" have died, but it's unlikely that all the 1,000 who have died were "Americans." Surely there were foreigners who died after traveling to the US from countries with high infection rates, like China, at the beginning of the outbreak.
It was part of a jeremiad opening the show, with Joe touting a "spot-on" tweet from a guy named Windsor Mann that slashed Trump like this: "Last month Trump declared victory over the Corona virus. This month he declared war on it. This week he surrendered."
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
3/26/20
6:03 am EDTJOE SCARBOROUGH: On February 10th he said: "by April, this will miraculously go away." On February 23rd, he said: "it's very much under control. We had 12 at one point, and now they've gotten very much better."
Again, yesterday, in Donald Trump's hometown [NYC], 1,000 Americans died of the coronavirus that he -- uh, uh, uh, a thousand total deaths, we went over yesterday. And in his hometown of New York City, 80 people died.
