MSNBC's Mika unloads on Trump's lazy COVID-19 efforts: '6 o'clock -- the lights are out completely at the White House!'
MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist blasted President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence for badly mismanaging the coronavirus crisis.
The "Morning Joe" co-hosts joined in the chorus of critics Friday to beg the Trump administration to give hospitals and doctors the tools they needed to face the gathering flood of COVID-19 patients.
"At this point, every American, whether you're a journalist, a health care worker, American citizen, is hoping for leadership at this point," Brzezinski said. "Look at the White House, you have a live look at the White House. Usually the lights are on, six o'clock in the morning."
"This could be symbolic," she added. "You've got American citizens doing social distancing, you've got health care workers doing what they can to confront this crisis would be the supplies. You've got scientists desperately saying, desperately saying that we are directly on track with Italy. Yet the lights seem to be out completely in this White House. The president seems to be unmatched. He is putting out false information by the day. The president also claimed yesterday an anti-malaria drug would be available almost immediately to help treat coronavirus. That is not true."
The White House still seems to be treating the public health crisis as a public relations crisis, the panelists agreed, and Geist said that's leaving hospitals in a real bind.
"It is a crisis in leadership and in hospitals right now," Geist said. "If those masks were available, as Vice President Pence claimed yesterday, we wouldn't be hearing from hospitals, we wouldn't be hearing from doctors. I wouldn't be getting frantic texts from doctors saying, 'We're down to our last mask,' or, 'We're already out of masks.' It is not just for the places taking coronavirus patients, it is for other hospitals who are being asked to give some of their masks to these critical centers, places like cancer hospitals here in New York City that are out of masks or have a week supply left. They have to get out and move quickly."
A group of hospitals in Indiana has asked the public to sew masks, and released a video and PDF pattern explaining how to make personal protective equipment that meets protocols set by the Centers for Disease Control.
"I can't believe what I'm watching," Geist said. "It is a hospital in Evansville, Indiana, doing what it has to do to get through this, pleading with the general public -- please, at home, sew us masks. If you read through the instructions, they say, give us a call. We'll meet you in the parking lot of a facility. Deliver the masks, and we'll sterilize them."
Geist said that exposed a failure of leadership by the administration.
"In this country, that in 1940 and 1941, turned automobile factories into airplane factories almost overnight, where are the masks?" he said. "Where are the supplies? Hospitals are dying out here."
