NBC Reporter Nervous as Trump’s Popularity Rises During the Crisis

Poor Andrea Mitchell. One of the media’s most unabashed Hillary Clinton boosters, the NBC reporter has spent the last three years in a state of undisguised misery as she has covered the Trump administration for both the network and the cable channel MSNBC. Her loathing for the president comes through every day on her daytime program, and she makes little effort to hide the fact that she despises President Trump. Of course, on the MSNBC airwaves, this bias is considered a strength, not a weakness.

Taking all of this into consideration, it should come as no surprise to anyone to see Mitchell constantly blaming Trump for the coronavirus outbreak and his administration’s supposedly-terrible response to it. And of course, it should not surprise you to see her growing nervous as Trump’s approval ratings soar amidst the crisis.

But it’s certainly amusing to see.

On Wednesday, Mitchell had a conversation with former Obama administration official Jim Messina to talk about the biggest downside of the coronavirus: that it is stealing so much attention away from Joe Biden, the likely Democratic nominee.

“There is politics involved,” Mitchell said somberly. “We’ve heard very little from, for instance, the more likely, most likely nominee of the Democratic Party, Joe Biden. He’s having difficulty projecting through this crisis as the campaign goes totally on hold. We’re also seeing some polls indicating the President’s approval ratings among Democrats and independents skyrocketing to their highest levels yet. Some 60% approval ratings for the way he’s handling this crisis as he continues to hold these briefings. The briefings are working for the President. No matter what he says, people seem to be seeing him as a leader, at least more people do.”

Now, just listen to this response from Messina: “Andrea, you and I share a healthy skepticism on public polling. And I think, you know, what polling shows right now is not going to be what happens, right? The problem President Trump has is he’s made a bunch of promises that have turned out to be wrong on this virus. And going forward, once we get really deep into this in the next couple of weeks, the American public’s gonna look back and say, ‘What did you say was happen and what actually happened?’”

Oh boy, now the liberals are “skeptical of public polling?” Since when? We didn’t see any of that skepticism when Hillary Clinton was slated to beat Trump. We didn’t see a whisper of it when Trump’s approval ratings were underwater. It seems that this “skepticism” has only been born out of a surge for Trump’s ratings. Interesting. How very, very interesting.

But Mitchell and Messina aren’t the only ones in the media wary of Trump’s soar in the ratings. Everyone from Rachel Maddow to WaPo’s Margaret Sullivan is calling on the networks to pull the plug on the daily coronavirus briefings, because they don’t want Americans to see Trump being a leader at a time of crisis.

Maybe they’ll play Biden’s living-room briefings instead. Those won’t give us any relevant information about the coronavirus, of course, but they’ll certainly make for some much-needed comic relief.