MSNBC’s Chuck Todd Compares Trump Coronavirus, War Dead Scandals to Hillary Email Story
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd and The New York Times’ Peter Baker analogized scandals like President Donald Trump’s current coronavirus-related political difficulties and alleged comments about U.S. war dead to the intense coverage of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server four years ago.
Much of the media’s reaction to the blockbuster Bob Woodward recordings — which revealed that Trump knew in early February that the virus was much more deadly than the seasonal flu, yet continued to “downplay” the threat — has centered around gaming out the political effect of deceiving the American people about a pandemic that has killed over 190,000 of them.
Thursday’s edition of MTP Daily was no exception, as Todd and Baker assessed the devastating effect stories like Woodward’s would have on Trump’s message.
Todd began the show by describing the Woodward story — along with the 5-times confirmed story of Trump trashing U.S. war dead, and two other stories featuring serious allegations — using the term “drip, drip, drip,” an unmistakable reference to the email story that Baker’s paper and MSNBC covered extensively during the 2016 campaign.
Minutes later, Baker joined the host, and told Todd that “The coronavirus is a bad story for [Trump], he perceives the discussion of law and order to be a potentially good thing for him politically as he goes forward,” and went on to add “it’s the drip drip drip effect.”
“Bob’s book will not be the end of this, there will be more,” he continued, and went on to add that more damaging books late in the campaign are “what the White House is worried about, and they should be, because there is a real danger, as Carol said, that they never get back on their own message, they’re constantly reacting to other people’s.”
“You know, in some ways, he’s a victim of the same campaign he was successful with four years ago,” Todd said, of Trump, and added “Hillary Clinton was a magnet for this stuff, and she couldn’t get away from it. And now Trump’s the magnet. And I think he’s now seeing that the shoe is on the other foot.”
Watch the clip above via MSNBC.
