MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt Emotionally Rebukes Don Jr. Claim Covid Deaths Are ‘Almost Nothing’: ‘Your Loved Ones Are Not Nothing’

MSNBC anchor Kasie Hunt’s voice cracked as she delivered a somber rebuke to Donald Trump Jr.’s recent claim that deaths from the coronavirus have “gone to almost nothing.”

On Friday morning’s edition of MSNBC’s Way Too Early, Hunt returned from a commercial break by playing a clip of Trump Jr. speaking to Fox News host Laura Ingraham.

“I kept hearing about new infections. Why are they talking — why aren’t they talking about deaths? Oh, Oh! Because the numbers are almost nothing, because we’ve gotten control of this thing and we understand how it works,” Trump told Ingraham Thursday night with the effect of a sentient eight ball, adding “If you look at my Instagram, they’ve gone to almost nothing. We are outperforming Europe in a positive way. We’ve gotten a hold of it.”

“Welcome back,” Hunt said following the clip.

“That was Donald Trump Jr., falsely claiming that the death toll has dropped to, quote, almost nothing, on the same day that the U.S. saw one of the highest levels of coronavirus deaths since the start of the pandemic,” she said, her voice cracking.

A somber Hunt then looked directly to camera and said “We would just like to say here that, to those of you that lost loved ones to Covid yesterday, your loved ones are not nothing to us.”

According to Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) COVID-19 Dashboard, Thursday saw 971 deaths reported in the United States, and a new record for daily cases set at 88,521. While well short of the highest daily total of deaths during the pandemic, Thursday’s toll is about double the low point of 500 average daily deaths that was reached for a short time in June.

Death counts typically lag behind new cases by several weeks.

Watch the clip above via MSNBC.