No, you do not, under any circumstances, got to hand it to the coronavirus.
Someone get this message to the on-air personalities at MSNBC. They’re still on the job and collecting their paychecks, which might account for why many of them seem positively giddy over the potential political victories made possible by a viral pandemic that has already killed more than 212,000 people worldwide.
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace, for example, mused this weekend that there is something ironic, a “silver lining” even, about the likelihood that the deadly virus may cause President Trump’s “sins” to catch up to him.
“There is something both tragic, and pathetic, and ironic about the fact that it took a, you know, color-blind, gender-blind, you know, state-line-blind virus to sort of have all of the president’s sins from his first three years catch up with him,” she said.
She added, “You can’t stand there and lie. You can’t contradict your scientists because they’re the ones that stand at 66% and 68% public trust, not you. He’s down at 38%. Pence is lower than him.”
Earlier, MSNBC host Chris Hayes, the earnest liberal, said that the global response to the virus has left him feeling inspired and filled with hope that the world may someday act with similar haste and resolve to fight … climate change. He also said outright several times that the pandemic has presented climate activists with a terrific political opportunity.
“[T]his period also feels a bit like a test,” Hayes said, “where there is some political capital because it is so pressing, as a kind of dry run for what we need to do [about climate change] on a bigger scale afterward.”
At least he made sure to note that the crisis has been “devastating and brutal” because “people are losing their jobs and people are going to food banks and people are sick and all of that.” However, he added, let’s not ignore the “the political possibilities” of the virus.
“[Y]ou have the way that CO2 goes up, the way that coronavirus spreads through population … and both sort of create this kind of urgency to act quickly,” Hayes said. “But there’s also the fact that … how are we going to pay for it is this question that haunted the question of the Green New Deal. Now, it is like $2.2 trillion [in coronavirus aid], out the door, in a few weeks.”
“[T]his segment,” he concluded, “which I didn’t necessarily think would leave me feeling leavened and inspired has done that.”
Then there is MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, who hosted a brief segment recently cheering what he believes is one “good thing” about the current economic crises: The clearer skies.
“If there’s a good thing about this economic crisis,” the Meet the Press host said, “it’s been the clean air, and views we haven’t seen for a long time.”
His producers then played a slideshow of before-and-after images of major cities that are suffering now from the devastating effects of the virus.
If you want to know how to spot a person who has not been affected in any meaningful way by the coronavirus pandemic, look for those who still have the time and privilege to view this crisis primarily through partisan lenses.
