MSNBC’s Schmidt: Trump’s ‘Incompetence’ Caused ‘Deaths’ in Puerto Rico

October 10th, 2017 12:20 PM

Blinded by his sheer hatred for Donald Trump on Tuesday, MSNBC political analyst Steve Schmidt blamed the President for “the deaths of American citizens in Puerto Rico” and feared the commander-in-chief would start a nuclear war that would cost “hundreds of thousands of American lives.”

After fearing on Monday’s Morning Joe of “the magnitude of the type of tragedy we could have with this reckless and irresponsible president,” Schmidt appeared with anchor Stephanie Ruhle in the 9 a.m. ET hour on Tuesday to declare that “we’re at a dangerous hour in this country.” He launched into an unhinged tirade: “The President, since he’s been inaugurated, has debased our culture, our politics, our civil society. His incompetence in recent weeks has actually lead to the deaths of American citizens in Puerto Rico.”

 

 

Schmidt wondered “where the basement is on all of these things” and warned: “...what we ought to be focused on acutely is his loose talk about nuclear weapons and their deployment in an area where there are hundreds of thousands of American lives at stake.”

The former Republican political strategist has made no secret of his loathing for Trump. On September 26, he similarly took to Ruhle’s show to label Trump a “racist” who was guilty of “the most terrible thing” that had “ever been done to this country by a President of the United States.”

Schmidt’s nasty rant was brought to viewers by Buick and GEICO.

Here is a transcript of the October 10 segment:

9:10 AM ET

(...)

STEVE SCHMIDT: And you think about this, what the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee [Bob Corker] is saying by his interviews is this President is unfit, he’s unfit. And we’re on the edge of a nuclear crisis in North Korea, President of the United States standing with the combatant commanders, loose talk about nuclear war.

When you think about North Korea, you have 12,000 pieces of artillery in hardened positions ranged on Seoul. The estimates are they could deliver 500,000 rounds in the first hour of that war. Chemical weapons, munitions included. We have 40,000 American serviceman in Japan. 28,000 in Korea. 250,000 American citizens in Korea. When you look at the combination of the incompetence and the malfeasance in Puerto Rico, I have very serious doubts about the capacity of this government to evacuate those American civilians.

And what history teaches us is that leaders tend to think they have the ability to control events. But in fact, it’s the events who drive leaders. And so, we have an incompetent president, judged unfit by the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who says, “And by the way, all of the Republican senators behind closed door acknowledge this,” who is saber rattling, talking loosely about the deployment of nuclear weapons. And so, we’re at a dangerous hour in this country.

The President, since he’s been inaugurated, has debased our culture, our politics, our civil society. His incompetence in recent weeks has actually lead to the deaths of American citizens in Puerto Rico. And so, nobody particularly knows, I think, where the basement is on all of these things. And so, I think we’re at a real critical hour. We can talk about NFL games, we can talk about the Vice President’s stunt. But what we ought to be focused on acutely is his loose talk about nuclear weapons and their deployment in an area where there are hundreds of thousands of American lives at stake.

(...)