Look, as we’ve said often, even a broken clock is right twice a day. And while MSNBC is overall an anti-Trump network, they did have a decent interview with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio regarding his response to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak in the city. The Big Apple is ground zero for this viral outbreak in the United States accounting for most of the 380,000+ cases in the United States. Nearly 12,000 Americans have been killed by this disease. On March 10, NYC Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot presented findings of the disease to the mayor and recommended a clap down to slow the spread. De Blasio refused. A day later it was reported that the mayor was still urging healthy people to go out and eat. On March 15, Comrade Bill finally began shutting things down, but the damage was done. In fact, it was done weeks prior when the city didn’t cancel the Chinese New Year festivities. On April 3, MSNBC plainly asked the mayor if he plain sucked at his response (via Newsbusters):
Working up to the question, Geist quoted to the New York City Democrat examples where he could have moved quicker: “Obviously, the set of facts we have today are a lot different than they were two months ago. But you tried to calm people on these morning interviews, where you would say, ‘I'm not going to close the schools. I'm not going to close the playgrounds. I think you can still go out and live your lives.’”
Geist demanded, “Knowing what you know now, do you wish you'd closed the schools a little bit earlier? Do you wish you'd closed the restaurants and bars a little bit earlier, just to stop the spread and maybe save some lives?”
De Blasio responded by asserting, “I did my best.”
You know, Willie, we're all trying to make sense of something we've never dealt with before. Every single day. Look, this city, I gave the order to close the restaurants and bars.... There's always going to be questions about, you know, did we get all the information we needed? Did we act on it? I did my best. I think all decision-makers are doing their best.
Talk about getting a nice load of buckshot to the face. De Blasio is a far-left Democrat who thinks the government should control everything, and now he’s facing some heat for screwing up the response while he also bashes President Trump’s response to this outbreak. It’s hypocrisy at its finest. This may be news to the de Blasio Democrats out there, but the government fails a lot. And this case was no exception. The New York Times reported that de Blasio had to be convinced to start shutting things down, by the way, after his aides went ballistic over his apparent sluggish response to all of this:
Mayor de Blasio is indeed here at the Park Slope YMCA this morning. Passers by have commented negatively. One called him an idot. pic.twitter.com/FIgEmlf4Gf
— andrew kaczynski?? (@KFILE) March 16, 2020
For most of last week, as Mayor Bill de Blasio continued to urge New Yorkers to mostly go about their daily lives — sending their children to school, frequenting the city’s businesses — some of his top aides were furiously trying to change the mayor’s approach to the coronavirus outbreak.
There had been arguments and shouting matches between the mayor and some of his advisers; some top health officials had even threatened to resign if he refused to accept the need to close schools and businesses, according to several people familiar with the internal discussions.
Teachers were threatening not to show up to school...a growing number of public health experts and politicians were calling for much of the city to be shut down to curb the spread of the virus.
Bill de Blasio. Failed 2020 candidate. And now an increasingly failed manager in a time of crisis.