MSNBC Analyst Says Texas Gov. Abbott ‘Did Nothing’ After 700 People Died Last Year And Now The Power is Out Again

Mathew Dowd, the chief political strategist on the 2004 Bush-Cheney reelection campaign, explained to Nicolle Wallace on Thursday the current state of play in Texas as a winter storm is yet again knocking out power.

Wallace, host of MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, began the segment by playing a clip of Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) addressing the winter storm. In February 2021, hundreds of Texans died when an ice storm took down the state’s power grid and forced millions to live without heat or water in one of the worst natural disasters in the state’s history.

“It’s Deja Vu in Texas,” she said. “That was Texas Governor Greg Abbott earlier this week saying he can’t guarantee there won’t be power outages in the state as it braces for another power grid failure for the second straight year. Nearly 70,000 people have already been affected by power outages today in Texas with more than 200,000 without power in several states as a winter storm slams parts of this country.”

Wallace went on to say Abbott had claimed “that he could guarantee that the lights would stay on if another storm were to hit Texas.”

Wallace then brought in Dowd, who is now an MSNBC political analyst, and asked, “What’s happening on the ground?”

Dowd responded:

Well, it’s a lot better than it was a year ago almost at this exact same time and it’s not because of anything the leadership did. It’s — as of right now, 40,000 people here are without power, but millions have gone through PTSD one more time, fearing the worst. That’s why we had crowded grocery stores yesterday and crowded gas stations yesterday and people accumulating water, because there was a great fear, because they all knew nothing had been done.

“We got lucky so far,” Dowd continued. “The next 24 hours, I think are important because the temperature is going to dip again tonight.”

Dowd continued to explain how the natural circumstances have so far spared Texas from a deadly repeat of last year and added that wind and solar power have “overperformed in the last 24 hours” – helping to keep people warm.

“Matt, just remind everybody of the root causes here and why governor Abbott is linked to mother nature in Texas,” Wallace then asked.

“So, 15 years ago the state was warned, Republicans were in power, not Abbott but Republicans were in power and they were warned that an event like last year could have happened,” Dowd explained.

“They did nothing. Ten years ago the legislature was told and the governor was told you need to do something because a catastrophic event is going to come and they did nothing. And then last year, as you led into this. They did nothing,” he continued.

“700 people, is the estimates, died from it,” Dowd said, “And 8 million people last year were without power. 14 million people were without water last year because they were all interrelated and in the aftermath they did nothing.”

Watch the full clip above via MSNBC