Ex-Republican explains why Trump's new 'dim' COVID-19 plan the 'greatest malfeasance in US history'

In a Wednesday interview with MSNBC's Steve Schmidt, the former Republican operative that abandoned the party explained that President Donald Trump's interview with Bob Woodward induced "a confession of the greatest lie in American history."

He went on to say that there isn't anything that "comes even close" to what Trump has done to lie and hurt Americans.

"Donald Trump knew how deadly COVID-19 was, and he lied to the people -- he called it a hoax, blamed it on the Democrats. He did everything he could to downplay this. And as a result, the United States is the epicenter," said Schmidt. "We have a shattered economy. There are more unemployed Americans on this day than on any day in September in the nation's history."

Schmidt said that every child's education in the United States has been "disrupted" if not "ruined." At the same time, "we have an American way of life that has been upended. Grandparents can't see grandchildren being born, no bar mitzvahs, no tailgates, no football games. None of it had to be."

He explained that it was a fact that was important to understand because during the ABC Town Hall Tuesday, Trump encouraged "herd mentality," though presumably, he meant herd immunity. The use of herd immunity means millions of Americans will die, not a few hundred thousand.

"If we had the same mortality rates that Germany did, another medical country, we would have 140,000 fewer dead Americans," Schmidt went on.

"What Donald Trump talked about last night when he talked about herd immunity apparently that is the plan," he continued. "We should understand it as the dimmest world plan ever articulated in the history of a country by a president. He's saying once the minimum number -- about 190 million Americans are infected, which would be a minimum of 2.5 million dead Americans, more like 3 million according to Johns Hopkins. At that point, we would collectively have a herd immunity that the virus would start to die out sometime in 2022."

He went on to call it a "catastrophe" that was avoidable and preventable.

"If anything, Bob Woodward is underplaying his description of it, it is a catastrophic leadership failure, but more than that, there is no equivalent in the country's history to it," said Schmidt. "It is the greatest malfeasance in the history of the united states."

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