You know what would make things better right now in the United States, where 30,990 people have died already of COVID-19? If presumptive 2020 Democratic nominee Joe Biden were to form a “shadow government” to compete with the Trump administration’s efforts to combat the virus.
Or at least, that’s what MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle suggested this week — two competing bodies wrestling each other for control of the country’s pandemic relief efforts.
MSNBC’s @SRuhle suggests Biden create “shadow government” to counter Trump during pandemic crisis pic.twitter.com/pxT8RvBuTU
— Kyle Drennen (@kjdrennen) April 15, 2020
Ruhle’s comments came Wednesday as she interviewed former Obama campaign manager Jim Messina.
“When you see President Trump with his erratic leadership, his daily clown-show press conferences,” Messina said, “To have real upstanding leaders like Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren talk about Joe Biden in personal terms, the kind of leader he would be, that contrast is really important right now … and it’s a contrast that the Biden campaign is going to bank on going forward.”
Ruhle then asked Messina whether the former vice president should start giving coronavirus press briefings of his own to compete with the White House.
“Then do they need to do it in a bigger way?” she asked, referring to Biden’s 2020 campaign. “What did you just call it, the president’s daily clown show — that’s his press briefing?
“Should Joe Biden be counter-programming that?” the MSNBC host continued. “Should he be creating his own shadow government, shadow Cabinet, shadow SWAT team — and getting up there at a podium every night, saying, ‘Here’s the crisis we’re in, here’s what we need to do to address this’?”
Messina responded by arguing that Biden has already done something along those lines.
“Well,” said the former Obama grunt, “he’s done some of that, right? He’s released the most comprehensive plans of what to do during this COVID crisis.”
The New York Times, on Sunday, published an op-ed by the former vice president, titled “My Plan to Safely Reopen America.”
Biden wrote, “we have to remember what this crisis has taught us: The administration’s failure to plan, to prepare, to honestly assess and communicate the threat to the nation led to catastrophic results.” Conspicuously absent from the former vice president’s op-ed is the word “China,” whose government essentially inflicted the virus on the world, and “World Health Organization,” which appears to have aided China in its initial cover-up. But Biden makes sure to blame the Trump administration for the severity of a disease that China brought to the U.S.
His “shadow government” is going to be great.
