President Donald Trump’s decision to abruptly begin the dissolution of the White House coronavirus task force was shredded by MSNBC host Chris Hayes, who pointed out that new Covid-19 cases are growing outside of New York and thousands of Americans still die everyday.

On Tuesday, news reports noted the administration’s inter-agency group leading the response to the outbreak no longer meets everyday and could soon be dismantled. Later during the day, the president affirmed that the task force will soon “have something in a different form” and again pressed for the reopening of the economy, telling Americans to think of themselves as “warriors” for returning to work even as he acknowledged that some people will “be affected badly” since the virus threat remains grave in many areas.

This nonchalance was too much for Hayes, who pointed out that not a single state had yet met Trump’s own benchmark of 14 straight days of declining cases before transitioning to phase one of relaxing social distancing and lockdown rules.

“He’s telling Americans who might be nervous about contracting the virus and dying, if they go back to work or go out in public or we go back to normal, that they need to think of themselves as warriors on the battlefield,” Hayes said. “When he says we have to get our country opened, he means come what may. I personally don’t think of the folks in, say, nursing homes as warriors that need to be sacrificed. But what the president seems to be saying is: ‘You’re on your own. Thoughts and prayers. Sorry if you were one of those people badly affected. Think of yourself as a soldier dying for the cause.’ There’s just this incredible disconnect from the rhetoric from the president, even the discourse that he’s helped anchor with all these protests we’ve seen, and the actual reality of the trajectory of the virus.”

The MSNBC host then reminded viewers of the fact that, outside of the New York City metro area, the number of positive Covid-19 cases is still increasing — and that thousands of Americans are still dying everyday.

“But the thing is the curve is not even flat really,” Hayes added. “Newly reported cases are going up. We don’t really know for sure, but things may be even getting worse. At the best, they seem to be plateauing. And we’ve already lost more than 70,000 of our fellow Americans. We are almost certainly going to lose tens of thousands more. And the virus is manifestly not suppressed. The mission is obviously not accomplished, and it’s becoming clearer and clearer that Donald Trump never even tried to accomplish it. He just wants to open up the country so the economy can come back and he can be re-elected.”

“One of big revelations was the administration refused to listen to early warnings about the virus and just ignored it, blew it off. That’s a pattern, of course,” Hayes continued. “From the beginning, this administration has been contemptuous and distrustful of the actual experts in the government. They have often instead listened to cronies and relatives and donors and legacy cases, and the buddies of the president. That’s who they turn to, to make policy, not the full institutional knowledge of one of the most powerful governments in the history of humankind.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/2YP9HYn