MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski ripped President Donald Trump to shreds for dragging his feet on testing for coronavirus, even after an outbreak exploded and shut down life in America.
The president insisted he knew the pandemic was coming, although just days ago he was calling it a hoax, and the “Morning Joe” hosts said neither of those conflicting claims made Trump look good.
“The president said he knew it was coming,” Brzezinski said. “It’s almost worse when you look at it that way. That’s just malpractice. You know something like this is coming, and you do nothing. That’s what he’s telling the American people. He did nothing from the get-go.”
Trump reportedly didn’t want to push out widespread testing weeks ago, before the virus took hold, because he worried that a large number of cases would make him look bad politically — and Scarborough said the president still seemed unable to grasp the crisis he’s facing.
“Who is in charge at the White House, other than the president?” Scarborough began. “We hear Jared [Kushner] is in charge at the White House. Why do we still not have tests? We keep getting promised a million tests here, a million tests there. Yesterday, we heard reports from a health official that we don’t have a lot of the supplies that are needed to apply the tests.”
“Who is in charge?” he continued. “I’ll guaran-damn-tee you, I can give you businesspeople that could be in charge of this and would say, literally, get me a test in a week — go. Even if it were a little longer than a week, they would be on war footing, like FDR. He basically sent Detroit to war, and Detroit helped win the war. What’s happening in this White House? Why are we still hearing this BS about ventilators, when it is BS? Why are we hearing BS about testing around the corner, when it is proving to be BS? When is somebody going to finally be in charge and get these tests to the people of Ohio who need it, to the people of Florida who need it, to the people of Arizona who need it, to the people of New York and California who need it, to the people in Nebraska who need it?”
Scarborough said the president’s mistakes at the start of the outbreak would eventually be made clear, but he was more concerned about what was being done now to halt its spread.
“What are we doing now?” he said. “What are we doing now is my question?”