David Urban went on Jake Tapper's Sunday show, State Of The Union, to spin the administration's response to coronavirus into a WIN, BABY! Even the Trump surrogate had to agree, though, that it would be best if Hair Fuhrer stood to the side as the experts took over the role of disseminating information.
The rest of Tapper's panel did their level best to hammer home the point that in cases of public health emergencies such as these, things like "truth" and "accuracy" coming from the administration would be the thing that calms the public more than anything, and protects them from harm. Urban tried, though, to insist that truth is what we've been getting.
The panel wasn't buying what he was trying to sell. Especially after seeing a clip of Trump comparing his response to coronavirus to his phone call to the president of Ukraine. Seriously? He brought THAT up? On PURPOSE? Panelists Linda Chavez, Bakari Sellers, and Alexandra Rojas took turns slapping Trump's pathetic surrogate around on his horribly negligent failure to respond to this crisis.
If I was the president, just let those guys speak. The president is trying to be the calmer in chief here and say, listen, people, stick to the facts, just wash your hands. I understand your --
TAPPER: He doesn't stick to the facts. He says things that aren't true.
URBAN: I would encourage the president to just let the folks push those guys out front, the surgeon general here is a very capable public health servant. And they're very smart. I think people need to calm down.
CHAVEZ: The problem is, David, you can say that if anybody wants a test they can get it, but then when people who are sick and coughing and hacking show up and can't get the test that word gets around. URBAN: Well, Linda, they just -- yes, they just (INAUDIBLE) out there --
CHAVEZ: He should in fact be calming the American public. I think we have to -- not overreact, but the worst thing to do if you want to keep people calm is to speak mistruths.
URBAN: The tests are out there now. The tests are out there now.
CHAVEZ: No, they're not.
URBAN: There's going to 4 million available this week.
CHAVEZ: They can't even test all the people from the cruise ship.
You know, that ship that's about to dock in Oakland, California that has been stuck offshore for days because of the number of people on board infected with coronavirus? Rojas pointed out that Pence stated we'd have one million testing kits out by last Friday, and there were only 1,800. Now we're supposed to believe the administration when they tell us there will be four million testing kits out this week?
And, I mean, when Italy is literally shutting down, northern Italy, 16 million, a quarter of their population, to deal with this pandemic and the United States is not able to account for the number of tests that we have in the field, the contrast is stark. And so it makes sense that the American public is very, very concerned with the way that this administration is handling it.
CHAVEZ: The one good thing, when we have more people tested and more people show up, is that the fatality rate is probably going to go down because I think one of the reasons you're seeing that 2 percent is the denominator that we're using is a false denominator.
SELLERS: Because we do know that it's less than 1 percent of people who passed away from the flu so hopefully you're right about that.
Is it worth even pointing out to these GOP defenders of Dear Leader that MATH exists? At least at the end all agreed washing hands was important...even Urban.
