'Worst case scenario': GOP candidates warned they'll go down in flames in November if they try to defend Trump's coronavirus response

Appearing on "Morning Joe" on Monday, MSNBC host Kasie Hunt explained that GOP lawmakers are facing a wipeout at the polls in November if they dare to defend Donald Trump's response to the coronavirus health crisis.

Speaking with host Joe Scarborough, Hunt issued a dire warning to Republicans, saying they need to "politically distance" themselves from the embattled president if they hope to hold onto their seats.

After Scarborough listed off all of the Republican incumbents who are already expected to lose in November, he asked, "How difficult is that going to be for a lot of these senators who embraced him for three and a half years?"

"Joe, it's hard to imagine a worse-case scenario, obviously for the country and the tens of thousands of people who have died," Hunt began. "But if you're a Republican trying to defend this president's handling of this, considering the facts at hand and what we know about how his administration handled or how he handled this pandemic in its early stages, and you played all of the things this morning that he has said about this, about how it was going to go away, it was only a handful of cases. This was not something people [Republican candidates] needed to worry about."

"All of a sudden, if you're trying to run for re-election in one of the worst environments, if not the worst environment in modern political history, depending where we are in November, if the economy is still lurching and, you know, millions of people, hundreds of thousands of people, are unemployed," she continued. "This is a situation that is almost impossible to navigate because there are still people and we've seen some of them in these pictures in these protests, who are going to be with the president, no matter what. But the broad swath of America, that was disengaged before, or turned off by the nastiness of politics is suddenly -- they're at home on their couches. they were turning on those briefings. they are watching the news. they are looking at what the president is saying and thinking, 'really?' So, suddenly, those people are in play as voters."

"This is a kind of cataclysmic event that stands to reshape our politics completely and I think it's important that we all remember that as we move forward into this election because this really is going to be an enormous pivot point in history and it's going to dramatically affect the political fortunes and futures, especially those tied to the party that's in power right now," she added.

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