Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” former White House director of communications Anthony Scaramucci criticized President Donald Trump over his response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Co-hosts Joe Scarborough said, “We can talk about what’s going on inside the White House. You know a lot of the players in there right now. Let’s talk about what’s happening on Wall Street. Obviously, the president got what he finally wanted from the fed which is reducing the interest rates about as low as you can reduce them. And yet we still have a run. Australia last night, lost about 10% of their market value. Asia also routed. Europe routed. And it looks like that’s going to be happening to the United States markets, as well. Wall Street set up for a very grim open. Why do you think the fed cut, the dramatic fed action yesterday, is having no impact on the markets this morning?”
Scaramucci said, “I think, Joe, good morning, but I actually think the fed has had a major impact on the markets. This would be way worse if they didn’t make that dramatic Sunday night cut, and why is that? Because you literally have set a pause button on the global economy for three to six months. And as you know, many people in the United States and globally are living paycheck to paycheck, or if you’re in a small business, you’re living revenue day to revenue day, and a result of which, when you step back and analyze the economy. Forget about the market for a second. There are many businesses and many families that won’t be able to sustain that.”
He continued, “The next thing that the market knows and people are starting to figure this out now is that Donald Trump is the virus. At the end of the day, what he’s done is affected and replicated through the executive branch, and he’s destroyed the crisis management elements of the executive branch that we need right now. Not only here in the United States, but globally. So the real tragedy of all of this— if the Federal Reserve can only do so much to help the markets. You’re going to need fiscal stimulus here and literally handing out free money to people to help them afford their rent, help them pay their waiters and waitresses in their closed restaurants. And again, it’s a national tragedy born from one person. You have remember to, the president’s staff is afraid of him. And so they don’t like dealing with them and they’re trying to make something that’s very insane, which is President Trump, sound sane. And so this is the danger that we’re dealing with right now. But the market does know, Joe, that Donald Trump is actually the virus and he’s replicated throughout the executive branch and has more or less decapitated their ability to handle this crisis.”
He added, “The first thing is to have a group intervention with the president and explain to him what he is doing in terms of telling people we’ve got it under control, and this litany of 18,000 or 20,000 lies at this point. They’ve got to isolate him. He almost needs to go into a verbal communication quarantine to help out the rest of the nation. The second step you have to do is listen to Dr. Fauci. We likely need a 14 to a 21-day quarantine of all nonessential services in the United States. If you listen to any of the people that really understand this problem, directionally, we’ll probably save the excess capacity issues we’re going to have in the hospital. So, to me, step one, quarantine the president. Get him off of Twitter. Get him away from a television camera, and then, step two, bring people in like Dr. Fauci to explain what’s going on and take immediate and aggressive action here. You have to overcompensate for the mistakes that have been made, but we need to do it immediately.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.