MSNBC Cuts Off RNC After Larry Kudlow Declares The Pandemic Over

White House adviser Larry Kudlow all but declared the pandemic over during an RNC segment on Tuesday that looked eerily similar to a used car commercial.

In his pre-taped remarks, Kudlow referred to the coronavirus outbreak in the past tense and bragged about a booming economy – even though tens of millions of Americans are out of work.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and Stephanie Ruhle quickly jumped in to correct the record once Kudlow’s segment was finished.

“[Kudlow] continues to talk about the coronavirus in the past tense. It’s not. We’re living with it,” Ruhle said. “While we continue to live with it, we’re in an economic crisis, and there are no booms.”

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Maddow added, “Thirty million people unemployed, and they’re making the case that the economy stuff is going great.”

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Stephanie Ruhle said:

[Larry Kudlow] continues to talk about the coronavirus in the past tense. It’s not. We’re living with it. And while we continue to live with it, we’re in an economic crisis, and there are no booms. We are in a fragile and selective economic recovery. People are buying houses and cars when interest rates are at 0 when you can finance so cheaply, people who have the money to do it. Even the stock market, which Larry Kudlow and the president often equate to the economy, it’s not the economy. But even the entire stock market isn’t booming. Of the S&P 500, it’s only a handful of companies that are driving things forward. And those are the behemoth tech, Amazon, Google, Apple. They don’t need to recover. They’re thriving during this pandemic. And he’s leaving out that a huge portion of the country that are not rising, the 30 million people that don’t have jobs today. The 80,000 small businesses that have closed already. So, yeah, there are a lot of small businesses that would say we want more deregulation, but if your business is shut for good, deregulation isn’t going to help you. And all those tax cuts he talked about, Rachel, nobody wants to pay taxes, nobody raising taxes, but eventually you’ve got to pay your bills. It’s the way the world works.

The RNC is trying to erase the past seven months

One of the central goals of the Republican National Convention so far is to erase the past seven months. They are trying to run on the version of America that existed before this year of crisis.

But you can’t undo 182,000+ American deaths. You can’t erase an economic collapse that has resulted in millions of lost jobs. You can’t paper over the stunning incompetence that the American people have witnessed day in and day out as Trump downplayed and mismanaged these crises.

Millions of Americans are suffering as a result of Donald Trump’s failed leadership. A poorly produced convention won’t erase that.

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Sean Colarossi

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.