Chris Hayes slammed President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic during his opening monologue, calling it “an absolute failure.” The MSNBC host also struck at the White House’s characterization of spiking coronavirus cases as “embers,” exclaiming, “the whole country’s on fire!”

Hayes began by calling the pandemic not only a “human tragedy” and “economic calamity” but also a “singular national humiliation,” as other countries around the world were seeing their case numbers more under control than the United States.

“The U.S. is a laughingstock or the subject of pity around the world,” Hayes said.”Our cases are skyrocketing. Our government’s response is a failure. We are living in this tragedy, this national humiliation for all to see,” adding that the U.S. had been setting new records for daily cases during the past week.

“We are seeing scenes of societies emerging from the pandemic all over the world,” Hayes continued, pointing out how other countries are getting back to normal: attending school in person again in Denmark, bars and movie theaters back open in Ireland, playing rugby in New Zealand, opening shopping malls in Japan, and so on.

Hayes turned to the administration’s characterization that the coronavirus cases were “embers,” like a “dying fire” that America could “stamp out,” comments that were repeated by White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany‘s comment at a presser this week.

Hayes noted that the “embers” comments suggested that it was possible to suppress the virus to the level where you just had embers and then could put them out, observing that this concept was indeed accurate — for other countries.

These other countries have successfully surpassed the coronavirus to the point “so they essentially have firefighters running around the country extinguishing each ember as it appears and stopping the country from catching fire, stopping the virus from spreading.”

“But that is not us,” Hayes continued. “No, we are way past the embers stage.”

“The country is on fire! It is in flames. We cannot stomp it out. And the rest of the world is looking on in horror.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.

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