MSNBC’s Ali Velshi tore into Dr. Scott Atlas for defending his tenure as coronavirus adviser to President Donald T...
MSNBC’s Ali Velshi tore into Dr. Scott Atlas for defending his tenure as coronavirus adviser to President Donald Trump.
Atlas reflected on his brief time as a White House adviser in a Wall Street Journal op-ed out Monday, and accused the media of costing lives by spreading misinformation about the virus. He spoke positively of how the federal government largely left it up to the states to decide on how to deal with the pandemic’s challenges.
Velshi called the piece “a stunning mix of bad facts and bad faith” while reminding viewers that Atlas left the White House after conflicting with other health officials over the value of public health guidelines.
On Atlas’s comments regarding the lack of a federal pandemic strategy, Velshi remarked that the former White House adviser seemed to be taking this as a “point of pride rather than a national embarrassment”
“Atlas thinks this absolves the Trump administration of any responsibility,” Velshi said. “Without acknowledging that public health experts warned a lack of a national plan will cause needless deaths, or that a plan in which states come up with their own restrictions has caused outbreaks that spread beyond their own borders.”
Velshi was especially angered, however, that “he has the gal to accuse the press of spreading misinformation about the pandemic.” The MSNBC host shot back that Trump has spread far more pandemic misinformation than anybody else:
In a just world, Dr. Scott Atlas would have to look every single American who lost a loved one to the virus in the eye. He would have to explain to them why he argued for herd immunity, which by design would sicken and kill untold numbers of people. He would have to justify running cover for a president who was willing to sit idly by while 300,000 of our friends, our neighbors, our fellow citizens, our loved ones died alone in a hospital room. We don’t live in that world. But the least we can do is never, ever listen to what Dr. Atlas has to say ever again.
Watch above, via MSNBC.
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