Chuck Todd Grills RNC Chairwoman for Deflecting to Joe Biden Over ‘Failed’ U.S. Covid Response: ‘He’s Not the President,’ Trump Is
NBC’s Chuck Todd and Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel collided on Sunday over President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
In an interview for Meet The Press, Todd confronted McDaniel over the Bob Woodward tapes of Trump admitting the seriousness of Covid-19 but saying he plans to keep downplaying it in public. The president and his defenders have insisted that Trump was speaking about his wish to prevent a public panic, but Todd pressed McDaniel over that notion by remarking “this isn’t a president who shies away from trying to incite panic or trying to fire folks up…It looks to a lot of people as if the president didn’t want to panic people because he’s worried the virus hurts him politically.”
The discussion continued with McDaniel defending Trump’s leadership through the crisis while Todd pressed her on the president’s calls for a swift national reopening and his constant battles with protective mask-wearing. This eventually led to Todd asking her “how do you account for the fact that it’s the United States of America that accounts for 25 percent of the world’s deaths,” to which, McDaniel concluded her response for that by lamenting Democrats are “politicizing a time of crisis when usually people come together.”
After making another reminder of Trump’s Covid downplaying, Todd noted that “the results speak for themselves. You compare us to the rest of the Western world, and we have failed. Is there any way to look at this and compare to the Western world and say that we’ve done better than other countries?”
“I will just tell you right now,” McDaniel responded, “if Democrats were in charge, if Joe Biden had his way, go look at his statements in January when he said the president was being xenophobic…”
“He’s not the president,” Todd interjected.
“He was running for president, and he had the same data and the same information,” McDaniel responded. “And while Democrats were trying to impeach this president, this president was taking decisive action. So I think it’s disgusting to take a crisis in our country and try and lay it at the feet of the president.”
Watch above, via NBC.
