Thursday on MSNBC, while host Nicolle Wallace was discussing with Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) the decision by the Justice Department to drop the case against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn for allegedly lying to the FBI amid the coronavirus pandemic, Wallace accused President Donald Trump of throwing around the COVID-19 death toll “with a callousness that’s just unimaginable.”
Harris said, “We have 33 million people in America who just in the last few weeks have become unemployed. To have a work requirement that people are employed in order to get food stamps is outrageous because, of course, we now have 33 million people who are not working. So there’s a lot of work that needs to happen and needs to happen immediately, to your point, so that these children are not going hungry.”
Wallace said, “What do you say about this whiplash? You look at the lines of cars in places like Dallas lining up for the food banks, and it’s clear that these were families on their way to carpool and offices 60 days ago, and now we have a president who throws around the death toll with a callousness that’s just unimaginable. What do you make of all the country has been through in the last 60, 70 days?”
Harris replied, “Honestly, it breaks my heart. I know it does that for all of us. People are suffering right now. People are hungry. They’re standing in lines. There is a hunger crisis in America right now, and we need to come to terms with this, and this is again where we need a commander-in-chief who takes on the responsibility of lifting up the American people and meeting their needs while in this crisis people are suffering literally to get food to feed their families. The fact that in America today, we have so many hungry people and that this is our crisis is unconscionable, and it requires all leaders to step up and focus on what is important today. It’s not letting somebody like Flynn off who pled guilty because he is guilty. It’s about having people in a position of leadership who are addressing the needs of people who are suffering in America today. The coincidence that this happened that the Department of Justice does this on the same day that the most recent unemployment numbers come out, on the same day that we have a report that one in five mothers is explaining that their children are hungry, talk about misplaced priorities. It is about an abject failure of leadership, abandonment of leadership when the American people need their government the most.”
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