WATCH: Morning Joe Airs Damning Montage of Trump’s Rhetoric as Coronavirus Death Toll Rose
Morning Joe aired a damning montage of President Donald Trump’s public statements over the roughly three months that the deadly Covid-19 contagion has taken the lives of nearly 75,000 American lives.
As Mika Brzezinski teased the segment earlier on Friday’s show, the video presents a “step-by-step look at the president’s words as the virus ravaged the country. You can watch what he’s saying versus the death toll. It will be a very striking look at how he has not led us through this with the facts.”
Over roughly the past 11 weeks, President Trump has consistently minimized the overall threat and impact presented by the novel coronavirus that, as of Friday morning, has led to over 70,000 American deaths. That is an objective statement, not an opinion.
A more charitable view of the Commander in Chief’s words, and his own defense, is that he was aiming to be a “cheerleader for the country,” or present an optimistic perspective. Critics, however, may see that as a blissfully ignorant approach that neglected insights from his intelligence and public health experts in a willfully underinformed manner that this would “all just go away.” It has not.
Watching the segment one is reminded of the Gish Gallop, which is a rhetorical technique based on overwhelming a debate opponent with as many arguments as possible, without regard for accuracy or strength of the arguments. In other words, it takes a lot more effort to refute and argue against false claims than it does to make them.
It takes significant time and effort to come up with a comprehensive point-by-point refutation of Trump’s shifting rhetoric on his administration’s response to the global pandemic, and while this segment does not explicitly refute Trump’s commentary, the rising death toll number is damning unto itself.
Watch above via MSNBC.
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