'Mr. President, please': MSNBC's Morning Joe begs Trump to stop making unrealistic promises about COVID-19

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough implored President Donald Trump to face the coronavirus threat as a public health crisis, and stop worrying about a short-term boost to the economy.

The "Morning Joe" host appeared to speak directly to the president, who regularly watches the show and often complains about its criticism, and urged him to send help to New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo is begging for necessary tools to fight a quickly escalating emergency.

"This is like a general under fire knowing that the enemy is approaching from all sides and begging for help for the sake of American people, for the sake of seniors, and the president's -- again, in that moment there seemed dismissive, almost contemptuous of that," Scarborough said.

The gathering emergency may not be apparent to Trump and many Americans right now, but Scarborough said there was no reason to believe the COVID-19 pandemic would spare the U.S. the same misery it had visited on other countries.

"It's going to be on an unprecedented health care crisis, and it's going to look much worse than China, much worse than Italy, much worse than Spain, much worse than France," he said. "We are going to be at the epicenter of this. I hope you're enjoying going around saying that there's nothing to this, because we're going to show you. This is just data. These are facts. These are trend lines."

"This is like a hurricane that's coming onshore, and that hurricane keeps getting closer and closer and closer," Scarborough said, "and to be a Floridian, I'm very aware of people who mock the warnings and ended up dead."

Scarborough pointed out how Republicans mocked mostly poor Louisiana residents who failed to evacuate from a hurricane nearly 15 years ago, and he said Trump and his allies were making a similar miscalculation about the danger they faced.

"You see Hurricane Katrina, remember those school buses in Hurricane Katrina that were in the parking lot where people could have been evacuated and they were saying why didn't they evacuate?" Scarborough said. "They had all those school buses, Republicans were saying this especially. Well, the school buses are still in the parking lot, you have a president who has been saying hurricane wasn't coming, hurricane's not coming. The press scaring you about the hurricane coming, it's all a hoax. All these people in the media saying it was just a hoax."

"Friends, let me tell you something, you can't negotiate with a hurricane," he added. "I'm from Florida, I know that. You can't negotiate with a pandemic, and while India and Great Britain and the rest of the world see this hurricane coming, and they're shutting it down."

Scarborough begged viewers -- including the president -- to understand the coming emergency.

"Friends, as much as I hate to say this, it's coming to the United States," he said. "The hurricane is coming. You know the press conference yesterday where the president was talking about we're going to have everything lifted by Easter? No. I mean, I'm glad people in the markets liked it, glad the markets went up. That's really great for your 401(k)s, it's great for the companies. It's fantastic. That's not going to happen. It's not going to be lifted by April, it's just not. It's not going to be lifted by Easter."

"If this president doesn't recognize that there's a storm offshore, doesn't recognize like India's leaders and Great Britain's leaders and the rest of the world's leaders, that storm is coming," he continued. "It's not a hoax, it's not one person from China like he said at the beginning of this crisis, it's not 15 people who have it and pretty soon that number's going to be down to zero. Show you the trend lines that show we're soon to be the most infected country on the planet, and just because it's not infecting you now, just because it's not impacting your neighborhood now, what you did three weeks ago is going to impact you to what you're doing today, is going to impact you and your family and your community and your city three weeks from now."

"The storm is coming," Scarborough concluded. "Mr. President, please, for the sake of senior citizens from Florida to Arizona, across America, in New York City, for the sake of people struggling even now in New York City, our doctors and our nurses on the front lines, Mr. President, please, recognize that storm is coming and stop telling people they're going to go out on their sail boats on Easter day with a category 5 hurricane lurking onshore."