MSNBC anchor Joy Reid hammered Donald Trump for what she said was an atrocious oversight of the coronavirus pandemic during his time as president.
Reid, surrounded by other MSNBC correspondents and contributing guests, delivered her criticisms during a segment covering Super Tuesday, one of the biggest presidential primary nights in which voters in 15 states and one territory choose their Democratic and Republican nominees.
President Joe Biden and Trump dominated the elections, with Trump only losing the Republican primary in Vermont to former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who withdrew from the presidential race by the end of the night. Their primary sweep sets a strong foundation to poise the pair for a rematch come the general election in November.
National news networks filled their primetime programs with coverage of each of the candidates. In one segment on MSNBC, Reid criticized Trump on his handling of the COVID-19 crisis before he was voted out of the White House in 2020.
“Donald Trump had one job. He had one crisis. It was called the pandemic, and you bollixed it completely,” Reid said. “You did so poorly at managing your sole crisis. He messed it up so badly that they had to do the stimmy.”
Reid uses the word “stimmy” to refer to the stimulus checks that the federal government allocated to Americans in 2020 and 2021.
“People loved the stimmy. Why did he have to do the stimmy? Because a million bodies are in the ground because of how poorly he managed an airborne virus,” Reid continued.
The U.S. government’s delayed response to COVID-19 when it first began to spread in the states caused a chain reaction that impacted millions of Americans. Inadequate resources, testing supply shortages, widespread miscommunication, as well as Trump’s careless approach and false claims about the virus made it difficult for the feds to get ahead of the growing crisis and left states to compensate for the shortfall.
Many state and local governments enforced long-term lockdowns, curfews, mask mandates, and social distancing guidelines. Outbreaks were rampant, and hospitals were overwhelmed. People in need of major relief lost jobs and loved ones to the pandemic.
Trump signed two massive stimulus packages in March and December 2020 that allocated $1,200 and $600 checks to American adults. These measures also boosted unemployment benefits, small business aid, and vaccine distribution.
Americans were in favor of the checks for the most part. Some Black voters even started putting their weight behind Trump, despite the issues that vulnerable and under-resourced communities encountered obtaining coronavirus tests and accessing health care resources during the height of the pandemic.
President Biden signed one more coronavirus relief bill in 2021, which sent $1,400 in payments to millions of Americans.
COVID-19 infections are still spreading in the U.S. Since the pandemic started, the CDC estimates that nearly seven million Americans have been hospitalized, and more than 1.1 million have died from coronavirus complications.
