MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski chastised President Donald Trump for "riffing" his way through daily news conferences instead of offering useful and accurate information on the growing coronavirus pandemic.
The "Morning Joe" co-hosts were astonished that Trump has begun talking about sending Americans back to work next week, as the virus continues to rage and death rates start to climb, in an effort to juice the economy.
"I personally, and I could be wrong, I think the president is just talking right now," Scarborough said. "Whether he's blowing off steam or he's sending a signal to businesses or his supporters that run big corporations that he wants to get the economy restarted again."
Scarborough suggested Trump was hearing from some advisers that the markets were more important than public health.
"He's getting pressure from inside the White House, from [economic adviser] Larry Kudlow," Scarborough said. "I know Larry, I like Larry, but Larry is not a doctor. Larry is the guy who said a couple weeks ago, along with Kellyanne Conway, that the pandemic was contained."
Brzezinski asked why medical experts had been sidelined during these daily briefings, and instead the president bluffed his way through vitally important topics.
"These updates are to update people on the reality of this virus, where it is, what the numbers are, where masks are, where supplies are, where testing is," she said. "Because people like Rand Paul walk around Capitol Hill interacting with everybody not knowing they have the virus. A case in point example in Washington, D.C., in the Republican Party."
"What more do they need? We need updates," Brzezinski added. "We don't need him riffing and surmising on politics. That's fine if you think he's politicizing and trying to figure out how to play the odds with this for his own political needs, but it seems like I would rather see Dr. [Anthony] Fauci there, and I didn't know -- I missed him yesterday."
Scarborough agreed that Monday's briefing was largely pointless without much information from medical professionals.
"I think most people were frustrated, yesterday, no new information that couldn't have been summed up in 60 seconds, 90 seconds, at the end of that press conference, by somebody else," he said. "But it's very interesting what you say about Rand Paul, because let's think about it. I keep talking about and banging the drum on the importance of nationalizing our effort and throwing absolutely everything we need, everybody we have into testing and expanding testing."
Trump's short-term solution to boosting the markets are the exact opposite of what medical experts and economists both are arguing should happen for the long-term health of the public and the economy.
"You've got an op-ed this morning by two Nobel Prize-winning economists saying if you want to reopen the economy, you've got to test everybody," Scarborough said. "That's the only way, if you're going to do what South Korea has done, you have to be able to do that."
"The White House is not making this a national priority," he added. "They're not making it a national effort."
