'Come on Mike!' Morning Joe unloads on Pence for 'sad and pathetic defense' of COVID-19 response

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough unloaded on Vice President Mike Pence's "sad and pathetic" defense of his coronavirus response.

Pence heads the White House pandemic task force, and he justified a largely mask-free nomination ceremony for Amy Coney Barrett that appears to have spread the highly contagious virus among administration officials and Republican lawmakers.

"It's just sad and pathetic defense put forth by Mike Pence of the White House super spreader event," Scarborough said.

Pence insisted the administration trusted Americans to make their own decisions on public health, and Scarborough agreed with Sen. Kamala Harris -- who said the administration had not told the truth about the pandemic.

"Mike, how can the American people make their own choices if you keep a lying to them?" Scarborough said. "How can the American people make the right choices, Mike, if Donald Trump knows in February this is a deadly infectious disease -- five times as deadly as the flu, he said. So deadly that it even impacts younger people, but Mike, if you lie and you keep lying repeatedly to the American people, if you tell the American people it's only one person coming in from China and it's going to be gone in late February, Mike, after you have been told and your president has been told by aides that 500,000 Americans could die from this disease, you have been told by national security advisers that this is the greatest threat that Donald Trump will face in his presidency."

"Mike, if you go out and lie to the American people, how are they going to have the information they need to make those right choices?" Scarborough continued. "You held a super spreader event on White House grounds, people hugging and kissing each other, and embracing each other. Like, seriously? Like COVID didn't even exist. Do you not understand, Mike, that you guys look like you were from another planet, and not a planet that any of us would want to visit unless we wanted to end up wheezing like Donald Trump after walking up a couple of flights of stairs. Not a planet that we would want to visit unless we wanted to say good-bye to our parents who are dying in the hospital over an iPhone."

"Donald Trump lied through his teeth about the deadliest pandemic to face this country in over a hundred years," he added. "Oh, come on, Mike."