On Tuesday's All In show, MSNBC contributor and disgruntled former Republican Steve Schmidt was full of hyperbole as he decried Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Jeanine Pirro as "spectacularly nuts," and incorrectly claimed that one is more likely to die of coronavirus in the U.S. than in any other country.
Additionally, when Schmidt also inaccurately claimed that there has been more mass death of Americans under Trump than any other President, host Chris Hayes lauded the misinformation as "unquestionably true."
Picking up from a point earlier in the show when he fretted that President Trump had started taking hydroxychloroquine because the medication has been talked up by some on Fox News as a possible treatment for coronavirus, Hayes lamented that many elected Republicans only consume news from right-wing sources, leading Schmidt to agree:
STEVE SCHMIDT, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Total insanity for sure, and when we look at the whole spectrum of the nonsense that's communicated to the American people through the vast and sophisticated Trump propaganda network that's heavily influenced by misinformation that's intended to divide the American people put into the social media sphere by hostile foreign intelligence services, it's a real threat to the comity in our country...
After taking more shots at President Trump because the official death toll is close to 100,000, Schmidt took aim at a number of prominent conservative hosts, including Fox's Ingraham and Pirro:
SCHMIDT: And you sit there and you look at Alex Jones and you look at Laura Ingraham and Judge Jeanine, all of them. I mean, each and every one is, in their own right, spectacularly nuts as they go on and talk about this stuff and that there are vulnerable people out there watching these people who make five, 10, 20, 30 million dollars a year following their advice, endangering themselves. It's just tragic. It's such a lethal con and fraud that's perpetrated by these people on the American people. There's just not a word for it. It's just despicable.
A bit later, Schmidt ignored the fact that confirmed deaths from coronavirus in Europe have been substantially higher on a per capita basis,the MSNBC contributor pushed more misinformation as he painted the U.S. as the hardest hit of any country:
SCHMIDT: Our country, Chris, the most powerful country in the world supposedly economically and militarily, we are a basket case -- we're at the center of this. You have more likelihood of dying of this virus in the United States than anyplace else. You have more likelihood of catching it in the United States than anyplace else. You have more likelihood of not being able to get a test for it [than] anyplace else.
There have also been studies suggesting that many countries may be substantially underreporting deaths caused by COVID-19.
Concluding his rant, Schmidt ignored the fact that the U.S. has faced much deadlier times -- including the Spanish flu pandemic and the Civil War -- Schmidt promoted the current crisis to the deadliest in the country's history:
SCHMIDT: The fundamental problem for Donald Trump is the man who said, "I alone can fix it -- I'm going to make America great again," has presided over a period of suffering, of mass death, of disease and economic devastation the likes this country has never ever seen in the entirety of its history.
HAYES: That last part is pretty unquestionably true.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portions of the Tuesday, May 19, All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC:
All In
5/19/2020
8:14 p.m. Eastern
CHRIS HAYES: I keep thinking about this piece a writer named Alex Pareene wrote several years ago. ... He said basically that for a long time conservative media had two echelons. One was talk radio and other things for the base, and there was a lot of conspiratorial stuff -- there was a lot of gawking of supplements and things like that. And then there was a kind of like elites who consumed other stuff, you know, they read a variety of newspapers, and then at a certain point, like, the people who consumed only the universe of right-wing media became the decision makers -- they became the people running for office -- they became the people elected President -- and this is what you end up with when that happens.
STEVE SCHMIDT, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Well, good evening, Chris. Total insanity for sure, and when we look at the whole spectrum of the nonsense that's communicated to the American people through the vast and sophisticated Trump propaganda network that's heavily influenced by misinformation that's intended to divide the American people put into the social media sphere by hostile foreign intelligence services, it's a real threat to the comity in our country, and so we've seen all of this play out over the course of this pandemic.
We've seen a President of the United States standing behind the podium emblazoned with the seal of the presidency saying, "Inject disinfectants, " saying he's taking this malaria drug that could kill him. Over and over and over again, the American people have been subjected to wave after wave of idiocy, of asininity, of misinformation from the President of the United States. And what it all adds up to is the most inept and incompetent response to a crisis that's conceivable to imagine. This is the worst roesponse by an American leader -- certainly by a President -- but any leader in a time of testing and crisis in our nation's history. It's appallingly bad. And so, as we talk right now, more Americans will be dead by the dawn, we're approaching 100,000 dead Americans because of the abject incompetence and mishandling of this by Donald Trump.
And you sit there and you look at Alex Jones and you look at Laura Ingraham and Judge Jeanine, all of them. I mean, each and every one is, in their own right, spectacularly nuts as they go on and talk about this stuff and that there are vulnerable people out there watching these people who make five, 10, 20, 30 million dollars a year following their advice, endangering themselves. It's just tragic. It's such a lethal con and fraud that's perpetrated by these people on the American people. There's just not a word for it. It's just despicable.
(...)
SCHMIDT: Our country, Chris, the most powerful country in the world supposedly economically and militarily, we are a basket case -- we're at the center of this. You have more likelihood of dying of this virus in the United States than anyplace else. You have more likelihood of catching it in the United States than anyplace else. You have more likelihood of not being able to get a test for it [than] anyplace else.
So when we look at the totality of it -- the mismanagement, the incompetence is so epically bad that there's no comparison to it in the whole of American history. And what we have is 90 plus thousand dead Americans and an utterly shattered economy and a President who every day deliberately misinforms, spins, lies to the American people with one objective in mind. The guy will say anything if he believes it will help his reelection. The fundamental problem for Donald Trump is the man who said, "I alone can fix it -- I'm going to make America great again," has presided over a period of suffering, of mass death, of disease and economic devastation the likes this country has never ever seen in the entirety of its history.
HAYES: That last part is pretty unquestionably true.
