Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) said President Donald Trump saying “it is what it is” when questioned on the coronavirus death rate in America was “the most cruel abdication of presidential leadership” he had ever seen.
Mitchell said, “Senator, the House passed something that clearly the Senate wasn’t going to go for, $3 trillion, and it had state and local aid and other issues, including help for the Postal Service to try to get a fair election with mail-in ballots. The Senate, as you say, has no sense of urgency. Why have they waited all these months, and now two weeks are expiring without any real action? Isn’t there some way, even among those senators who are in swing states and are up for reelection?”
Menendez said, ” It’s unexplainable. Let me just refine the statement. Democrats in the Senate have a sense of urgency. That’s why 2 1/2 months ago, Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer sent a letter to the president and is to Senator McConnell saying we’re going to need more help for the American people. A national emergency requires a national response, but for 2 1/2 months, we got crickets, we didn’t hear anything. No response to that sense of urgency then, and now, we have the lack of engagement, of the robust engagement that is necessary to ultimately meet the challenge.”
He added, “I mean, look, it’s exemplified by their leader, President Trump. When he says, ‘it is what it is,’ that is the most cruel abdication of presidential leadership I’ve ever seen.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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