"Morning Joe" hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski reappeared on MSNBC this afternoon to discuss the president's painful press conference.
"There does always seem to be an overpromise," said Scarborough after President Donald Trump's press conference. "You have, as you're going into the press conference, you hear today, for instance, we heard there was going to be big news from the FDA. All we heard is something that doctors were telling me a week ago that anti-Malaria medicine may be available to make the coronavirus effects a little less severe."
He went on to say that what he found striking is how tired and overwhelmed the president looked standing at the podium. He's no longer having fun, he has to govern and the stakes are high.
"He made very clear today, again, and you talked about the 'federal government' is not a shipping clerk but unlike past products s presidents, whether it was FDR or George W. Bush after 9/11, this president is not going to use the White House as the command and control for a national emergency. And national emergencies don't get much more extreme than this."
He explained that what is being heard on the record from Trump and off the record from his aides is that "this is up to the 50 governors, this is up to the free market. The free enterprise."
On and off the record he keeps hearing the talking point that the crisis is going to be "locally managed, state-run and federally supported."
Trump, he said, believes that the federal government can't have a role other than cutting regulations.
"That seems right now to be the extent of it. We've got no answers in the press conference really about how quickly these drugs were going to be moved to the market," he continued. "We really got no further answers on testing. And at the end, we had this really strange spectacle of the president bashing the media, basically saying they were swallowing whole Chinese Communist talking points. At the same time, the president was talking about bipartisanship and how impressed he's been that this country is coming together. So, obviously, an uneven performance and I'm not so sure that it's a performance that will assure the markets today."
Brzezinski agreed, saying that it's clear the United States was caught "flat-footed" in the fight against a deadly virus and worse, we continue to be. The New York Times revealed that before the outbreak a cascade of warnings were issued about it.
"You go to this news conference, you want to hear the latest. You want to ask questions about the latest on testing, on supplies, like masks and ventilators, and you've got sort of long, rambling tirades from the president going all over the place talking about fantastic remedies that will be unbelievable like nothing ever seen before and none of it is imminent," said Brzezinski. "None of it is now. none of it is any time soon and there are no masks, and we have the CDC website guidance giving guidance to make your own. That's where we are."
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