MSNBC’s Reid: Pence Speech Attendees ‘In Danger of Dying from COVID Now’

During MSNBC’s coverage of the 2020 Republican National Convention on Wednesday, host Joy Reid stated that those who attended Vice President Mike Pence’s speech on Wednesday, “are in danger of dying from COVID now,” and the White House doesn’t care.

Host Rachel Maddow stated that “our reporting suggests that there was not universal testing of everybody who was invited to this event, and to have so many elderly veterans or otherwise elderly people in this audience, not sitting socially distanced, the vast majority of them not wearing any masks, for this to go on for a very long time, including a lot of chanting and shouting, I just — it’s — I feel concern for what’s happening here, especially after what happened at the Tulsa rally, and at other Trump events, when they have done — gone out of their way to try to portray, to try to show a visual image of a world and a country that’s gotten past the COVID threat, when we really haven’t. I know politically, why they want to do that, but this is potentially a dangerous situation, even in an outdoor setting, for all of these elderly veterans tonight.”

Maddow continued by contrasting Pence’s praise of President Trump’s handling of the pandemic with the death toll.

Reid responded by saying that Pence is talking like the pandemic is over and listing some of Pence’s positive statements about the president’s handling of the virus before stating, “They are creating a separate and new reality, that is the complete opposite of reality, and just saying it with a straight face, in droning fashion, into the camera, and it’s scary to think they really do believe that there — and there probably are tens of millions of people that will just accept that reality. But meanwhile, as Rachel just said, the actual humans standing in front of them, or sitting in front of them applauding are in danger of dying from COVID now, and they don’t care.”

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