Rachel Maddow tore into Donald Trump’s incompetent and chaotic response to the coronavirus on Tuesday, saying it has turned America into a global health threat.
What’s worse, according to the MSNBC host, is that the federal government’s response to this crisis isn’t getting any better – even after nearly six months of the virus being in the United States.
“It’s not like we had some early problem and now we’re having a hard time getting over it,” Maddow said. “Our bad decisions are now.”
She also blasted Trump for acting as if the virus isn’t even a threat anymore.
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“As the epidemic has started taking back off like a rocket, the president doesn’t even talk about coronavirus anymore,” she said.
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“This is what it looks like when a country goes off the rails,” Maddow said of the worsening coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. #ctl #p2 #maddow pic.twitter.com/4EpSfU2HaE
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) July 1, 2020
Maddow said:
This is what it looks like when a country goes off the rails, right? All these nonsense decisions – turns out they add up. I mean, this cumulatively is what the failed American response looks like right now, and it’s a million little decisions and it’s the absence of federal leadership, but what it adds up to now is 40,000 Americans getting newly infected every day now. When the rest of our allies, the rest of the industrialized world has wrestled this thing to the ground, we are just making incredibly backward decisions every day that keep making it worse. It’s not like we had some early problem and now we’re having a hard time getting over it. Our bad decisions are now. You look at us against France, Italy, Germany, yeah, it’s no surprise the EU today announced formally that it’s ready to open its borders to travelers again, except not to Americans. Are you kidding? America? Look at the U.S. epidemic. No way. We are a threat. We are perceived as a threat and in some ways we are a threat to the whole rest of the world. As much as we are all a threat to each other now because of how disastrously this thing has been mismanaged. And the mismanagement is, you know, chaos, as much as anything. There isn’t a federal response to speak of. As the epidemic has started taking back off like a rocket, the president doesn’t even talk about coronavirus anymore. I mean, he does occasionally criticize people for wearing masks. He says that’s just people trying to make him look bad.
Trump’s ‘ignorance is bliss’ strategy has turned America into a global health threat
Back when Donald Trump wanted to turn the pandemic into a reality TV series, the president couldn’t seem to get enough of the virus.
But as his poll numbers quickly collapsed and millions of Americans started losing their jobs, Trump gave up and decided it’s a better strategy to just act as though the coronavirus outbreak isn’t even happening.
It’s why he refuses to wear a mask in public. It’s why he explicitly told his staff to slow down testing. It’s why, as Maddow pointed out on Tuesday, he doesn’t even talk about the virus anymore.
But the president’s refusal to step up and lead during this health crisis hasn’t made the virus go away; it has only helped it spread even more.
Donald Trump’s ‘ignorance is bliss’ coronavirus strategy has turned America into a global health threat.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
