MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes criticized President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus outbreak during his Friday broadcast.
Hayes said, “Consider this: how does anyone–you, me, Vice President Pence–know how to handle a situation if we don’t know the full scope? We have had three months to prepare for the coronavirus to come to the U.S. and see how outbreaks started. We have completely failed. The federal government have completely failed until now. We are weeks and weeks behind where we should be.”
After comparing the coronavirus outbreak to Chernobyl and Hurricane Maria, Hayes played a clip of Trump being asked about a cruise ship docked off the California coast with coronavirus patients.
Trump said, “I’d rather have the people stay, but I’d go with them. I told them to make the final decision. I would rather — because I like the numbers being where they are, I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship … I would rather have the numbers stay where they are. But if they want to take them off, they’ll take them off.”
Hayes said, “He’s saying that his preference, in defiance of the experts, is that the sick Americans stay marooned on the boat because he doesn’t want the numbers going up for him… All he cares about at the numbers, not the actual problem.”
He concluded, “You cannot spin a virus. Countries like China learned that early on. Spinning is all our president knows. This is what happens when you elect a BS artist to the most important job in the country. He has BSed his way through his entire career. He has BSed his way through a crisis, and he is trying to BS his way through this one so here we are.”
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