MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace says political damage to Trump is the 'silver lining' in coronavirus devastation
MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace, during her segment on Thursday, April 23, suggested that there was a "silver lining" in the devastation the US is facing amid the ongoing coronavirus outbreak: the damage to President Donald Trump's reputation.
Wallace, during a panel discussion, said: "There is something both tragic, and pathetic, and ironic about the fact that it took a, you know, color-blind, gender-blind, you know, state-line-blind virus to sort of have all of the president’s sins from his first three years catch up with him. You can’t stand there and lie. You can’t contradict your scientists because they’re the ones that stand at 66 and 68 percent public trust, not you. He’s down at 38 percent. Pence is lower than him."
The anchor was referring to repeated unscientific claims made by Trump during his daily press briefings in the White House. Trump, in the latest incident on Thursday, suggested research into whether coronavirus could be treated by injecting disinfectants into the body. The president also appeared to propose irradiating patients' bodies with UV light, an idea which was immediately dismissed by a health expert present at the briefing.
"I mean, he needs those people whether he likes what they say or not and I wonder what you think about whether or not there’s some silver lining there, that some of the things that, that we’ve been talking about for three years may be finally catching up with him?" Wallace asked other panelists.
The former Ebola czar under former President Obama, Ron Klain, responded by saying that a leader would "tell the American people the truth." The expert, during the segment, also touted Obama's honesty to the country of the "bad news" that was ahead during the Ebola outbreak.
"When President Trump stands up yesterday and says 'There will not be a second wave,' he is denying the inevitable," Klain explained. "If you look at the history of epidemics, there's always a second wave and a third wave. The idea that there's a smooth curve up and a smooth curve down is wrong."
The expert also added: "And so when the disease comes back this fall, will President Trump try to tell us again, 'No one saw it coming, who could have possibly foreseen that?' That argument, which is a false argument now, is going to look like a ridiculous argument in the fall when he stood in the briefing room and tried to spar with his own health officials about the scientific indefinability that this virus will be back."
Shortly after Trump's suggestions of research on injecting disinfectants, on Thursday, leading disinfectant producer Reckitt Benckiser, which owns Lysol and Dettol, issued a strong warning against the use of its products on the human body, the BBC reported. The firm said "under no circumstance" should its products be injected or ingested.
The novel coronavirus cases in the United States have crossed 870,000, and over 50,000 people in the country have succumbed to the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University.