NBC anchor Chuck Todd said Sunday on “Meet the Press” that it was “likely” Congress will commission an investigation into President Donald Trump’s failures during the coronavirus pandemic.
Todd said, “The pandemic continues to tear through the country, the four highest COVID case counts since the coronavirus hit were recorded last week. As were four of the eight highest daily death tolls, including the top two. As we’ve noted, we’re now experiencing a 9/11 every day and it’s worse than a 9/11 on some days. After September 11th, the government created a commission to study what went wrong. Our question this morning is it time to establish a 9/11-like commission to study how significant parts of our government missed this, chose to dismiss the obvious danger, making it impossible for health officials to do their jobs?”
He continued, “There are many other areas to probe, like why was the nationwide COVID testing so deeply flawed, or the consequences of a president who spent his energy denying the pandemic, mocking safety measures like mask wearing or social distancing, or allegations that the Trump administration increasingly exerting influence over the CDC’s messaging and data to play down the severity of the virus.”
Addressing PBS White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, Todd said, “Yamiche, what kind of appetite do you think the Biden administration’s going to have? I talked about a COVID commission, I think that’s likely to happen, something like that. But I notice The New York Times called for something, they didn’t call it this but it felt like a truth and reconciliation commission. Is that something our current politics will allow to happen?”
Alcindor said, “It’s very hard to have a truth and reconciliation commission when Americans can’t agree on the truth.”
She added, “I remember being on “Meet the Press” when Rudy Giuliani told you truth isn’t truth. It is the thing that defined the Trump administration and this era, that they wanted to completely create a new version of the truth and so many Americans — more than 75 million of them — went along with that for President Trump. I’m not sure if we can get to a place where Americans can sit down and say, ‘Let’s talk about our differences,’ when we can’t even agree on the facts.”
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