MADDOW: These daily briefings from the White House are a litany of things from the President that would be awesome if they were true, if they were happening, but they're not. and so the sooner we come to terms with that, i think the better for all of us. if it were up to me and it is not, i would stop putting those briefings on live TV. not out of spite, but because it's misinformation.

REID: Since it is Sunday, can I give sister Rachel an amen? Amen. Like Rachel and all of us at MSNBC, I watch Donald Trump's briefings so you don't have to. It is hard to escape a simple and sobering fact about those briefings. Almost nothing that Trump says in those briefings is true. He even once falsely claimed the FDA approved a malaria Drug for coronavirus treatment. The FDA had to quickly release a statement postbriefing clearing up Trump's, what reare we calling it, error, mistake, made up thing in his head. He forced experts like Dr. Tony Fauci to play clean up for him, and his daily briefings, they're dangerous. Trump's followers believe him, they believe anything he says and the things that he's saying put them in danger. The false hopes that he's feeding to Americans put us all in danger. And it is clear that this man is simply not capable of telling the truth or he's just determined not to.

So it is fair for you, those of you out there, to ask, why are we giving him national air time to lie to us in the midst of a global pandemic crisis? Because what is clear is that Trump seems to need these pressers, for him, it is not an original thought at all. But to paraphrase, many, many, many people who noted this, they seem to be his substitute for his rallies. Where he can lather himself in the praise of everyone around him, they're forced to do while standing too close to him on the dais. They seem required to serve it up and he seems to need it. He can bathe in the reflected glory of actual experts like Dr. Fauci. So the question is, why are we continuing to do it? And I would like you to imagine, just for a moment, what it would look like for one moment, if it was not Donald Trump, but it was Barack Obama, President Barack Obama, standing up there, doing these briefings, and making things up, and not being able to back it up with facts, how would they treat him? You don't have to imagine that, because, a, Barack Obama wouldn't have done that, and didn't do that, but let's take a look at the way that the former President, Barack Obama, was treated when it was not a pandemic, but the ACA, the Affordable Care Act website, went live, and it didn't quite work. here's how he was treated by the media.

(CLIP)

OBAMA: You know, that's on me. we fumbled the rollout on this healthcare.

REPORTER: Do you think the failed healthcare rollout led to a breach in the public trust and confidence in government and if so, how do you plan to resolve that?

REPORTER: You hear criticism on the Hill that you and your White House team are too insular. Is that how this mess came to be?

REPORTER: You said while the law was wassing was being debated, if you like your plan, you can keep it. Americans believed that to you when you said that to them over and over. Do you not believe the American people deserve a deeper more transparent accountability from you as to why you said that over and over?

(END CLIP)

REID: Joining me now, Jennifer Rubin, opinion writer at The Washington Post, Kurt Bardella, David Corn, author of Russian Roulette, Gabriel Sherman, the author of The Loudest voice in the Room, and Republican media strategist Rick Wilson, author of Running Against the Devil. So subtle with his titles, that Rick Wilson. Gabriel Sherman, to you first, for your reporting on this. It is just an outside looking in observation that Donald Trump seemed to have substituted the rallies that fed him emotionally, with these briefings is there any other reason he's doing them?

SHERMAN: Yeah, it is a great question. My sources who are in touch with the White House, several people told me that one of the things driving this is that the President has been furious and frustrated at New York Governor Andrew Cuomo who has been holding these very widely well received more early morning press conferences and in the President's view has sort of hijacked the news cycle. and so now you see Trump, you know, taking the stage after Cuomo trying to take back the mantle. And unfortunately he's doing that with misinformation. So we're in a situation where the President's narcissism and his need to be at the center of every story, even though the story is not about Donald Trump, this story is about a global pandemic, is what is Driving the White House's communication strategy. I had a senior former West Wing official tell me that the President needs to be his own press secretary and that's what's driving this.