“Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski claimed Monday that coronavirus deaths in the U.S. are “higher” than the approximately 40,000 officially reported, saying people “can feel” it.
“People know, they can see, they can feel. Testing would have prevented deaths and would allow us to reopen safely. And don’t have it. And the Americans can see it,” Brzezinski said on the MSNBC program.
“The other number they can see and feel: 40,000 people dead … 40,000. That’s not the number of unreported. That number is higher,” she said as co-host Joe Scarborough added, “much higher.”
Brzezinski continued, “People see it, they feel it, they know people, they’ve had it.” (RELATED: Joe Scarborough: Dr. Phil And Dr. Oz Spreading ‘Propaganda’ For Trump)
They then pointed to a series of polls conducted by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal that show public disapproval over the way President Donald Trump has managed the coronavirus crisis.
Brzezinski noted that “65% said that Trump did not take the coronavirus threat seriously enough at the beginning, 32% believe that he did. Thirty-six percent say they trust the president’s opinion of the coronavirus. That’s compared to 66% who say they trust their state’s governor. And 60% say they trust Dr. Anthony Fauci.”
She then claimed that support for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is eclipsing Trump because the former vice president “is careful with his words” and has produced some “really strong” campaign ads that “show clearly — clearly — that Joe Biden saw this [coronavirus pandemic] coming. He was writing about this in USA Today in January.” (RELATED: Ben Carson: If We Wait For COVID-19 Virus To Be Completely Gone Before Reopening, ‘Our Economy Will Be Gone Also’)
Brzezinski lauded Biden for his alleged foresight in anticipating the crisis that was “coming like a steamroller … in the direction of the United States. He was concerned. He called on the White House, the president, the administration, to take it seriously. They did not. This is plain and simple.”
Democratic presidential hopeful former US vice president Joe Biden participates in the 11th Democratic Party 2020 presidential debate in a CNN Washington Bureau studio in Washington, DC on March 15, 2020. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Biden accused Trump of “xenophobia” after the president referred to COVID-19 as the “China virus” because it came out of the Chinese city of Wuhan. The former vice president said Trump moved too slowly to protect Americans from the pandemic.
Biden advanced several false claims, including suggesting Trump cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and that the president described the pandemic as “a hoax.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor for the coronavirus task force, said that Trump took the COVID-19 threat seriously from the beginning of the crisis.