Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff and ex-liberal mayor of Chicago, famously said you should never let a crisis go to waste.
MSNBC’s Morning Joe took Emanuel’s words to heart today. On Thursday morning when people were desperately searching for information about the impacts of Hurricane Milton, the show gifted a big chunk of its opening hour to Kamala campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu to blast Trump.
Under the guise of speaking about preparation and communication during hurricanes, Landrieu spewed a firehose of partisan shots at Trump.
Co-host Willie Geist’s first question seemed innocuous: “What does a mayor do in preparation when they know a storm of this magnitude is about to arrive on your shores?”
Landrieu unloaded: “Trump, when somebody tries to use whatever agency they have, whatever power they have to turn people’s pain against them for their own political purpose, that is not the kind of person you want holding the wheel when you’ve got a Cat 5 storm barrelling against you….What Donald Trump said, which should not surprise anybody, that’s the guy’s character. The guy turns everything he touches to dirt.”
Geist must have seen Landrieu’s decision to immediately go partisan allowed him to drop this faux seriousness of focusing on the storm to a segment you’d see on any other day, lamenting hurricanes in the social media age are far different than when Katrina hit. Landrieu bizarrely invoked a president having their finger on the button to trigger nuclear war (click “expand”):
GEIST: Yeah, Mr. Mayor, I guess I was thinking about you and Katrina and the storms you experienced down there, kind of happened before this age of social media, when conspiracy theories could spread so quickly. Now, there certainly were many conspiracy theories about Hurricane Katrina. We won’t give air to those here this morning, but how different is it today than when you were overseeing relief for Hurricane Katrina? Not just because of that, but because you now have a man at the top of the Republican Party, who tens of millions of Americans trust and listen to, who is pushing all of this bad information. And they may get that instead of the truth.
LANDRIEU: Right. Well, a couple — just some very basic things. If someone’s got bad character, and they’re making — they — can’t — it causes them to make bad choices, and those bad choices equal bad consequences and that’s what Donald Trump has — has displayed since the day he came down that golden elevator [sic] and he’s just getting better at being bad. And so it’s a real problem and of course, you have social media, which can actually be the fuel to make it go faster and harder. It gets that much worse. But, I want to just caution, the President of the United States, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, her team with FEMA, and the governors, have done an excellent job here of getting people ready. But they just have to be able to listen to the folks that are on the ground, that know the most, and hope that most of the people will listen to them. Because it does have long-lasting and damaging effects, but my question to the people of America is: why would you want a guy that doesn’t tell the truth about something so serious as a storm, to be the guy that actually puts his finger on the nuclear button for the — for rest of the world? It just, to me, it seems to strain credibility. People know who he is. People need to make a decision about what pathway they want to go and the choice from my perspective is really, really clear.
PANIC! Cue the Daisy commercial!
Trump had his finger on that button for four years, and if I recall correctly, never went thermonuclear.
Before closing with a specific campaign question, frequent panelist Mike Barnicle interjected with more laments about the rubes he claims to care about:
So, Mayor Landrieu, that question that you just posted. You also have a dual role. You’re campaigning across the country for the Democratic ticket, for the Vice President to — to win the presidency in November. What do you say when you’re confronted by people across the country — good people, ordinary people who lost faith in the government, who halfway believe some of the things, as preposterous as they might be, that come from the utterances of Donald Trump or people like Marjorie Taylor Greene. What do you say to them?
Here’s the transcript.
MSNBC’s Morning Joe10/10/246:34 am EDT
WILLIE GEIST: You’ve lived this. You’ve been through this. Any mayor of New Orleans has. What does a mayor do in preparation when they know a storm of this magnitude is about to arrive on your shores?
MITCH LANDRIEU: Well, thank you for that. You know, I was Lieutenant Governor when Katrina hit then we went through Rita, then we had Ike, then we had Gustav, then we had the BP oil spill, and a host of other ones when I was mayor of the city. I can tell you that, if there was ever a time the phrase, out of many, we are one, is necessary and important, it’s during a potential catastrophic event. Mike [Barnicle] made some really good points because people are at their most vulnerable state. They’re scared. They need good information. They need to be able trust whatever it is that they’re hearing. And the good responses involve clear command and control, clear communication, and really excellent coordination between whoever the president might be, the governors, the elected officials, EMS, fire, all these things have to hit in order for people to do the most important thing, which is to get out of harm’s way. And, it looks like, really, all of the governors across the southern states and, of course, Governor DeSantis in Florida did an excellent job of making sure that, in working with the president, working with FEMA, people got out. And so, I just heard the mayor of Fort Myers say he doesn’t think there was loss of life and that’s critically important. The other side of that, when somebody tries to undermine that, When Trump — when somebody tries to use whatever agency they have, whatever power they have to turn people’s pain against them for their own political purpose, that is not the kind of person you want holding the wheel when you’ve got a Cat 5 storm barrelling against you. And, of course, that’s the great danger and the pain. All the people in Florida right now that are out of power, they don’t know what happened to their house. They don’t know whether they lost everything that they have. They don’t really know how and when they’re going to get back and they have to be able to trust the folks on the ground and that’s why what Marjorie Taylor Greene said and, of course, what Donald Trump said, which should not surprise anybody: that’s what the guy’s character is. The guy turns everything he touches to dirt. That’s the kind of leader we’re going to have if we put him back in the Oval Office again. And it’s going to hurt people a lot.
GEIST: Yeah, Mr. Mayor, I guess I was thinking about you and Katrina and the storms you experienced down there, kind of happened before this age of social media, when conspiracy theories could spread so quickly. Now, there certainly were many conspiracy theories about Hurricane Katrina. We won’t give air to those here this morning, but how different is it today than when you were overseeing relief for Hurricane Katrina? Not just because of that, but because you now have a man at the top of the Republican Party, who tens of millions of Americans trust and listen to, who is pushing all of this bad information. And they may get that instead of the truth.
LANDRIEU: Right. Well, a coupl — just some very basic things. If someone’s got bad character, and they’re making — they — can’t — it causes them to make bad choices, and those bad choices equal bad consequences and that’s what Donald Trump has — has displayed since the day he came down that golden elevator [sic] and he’s just getting better at being bad. And so it’s a real problem and of course, you have social media, which can actually be the fuel to make it go faster and harder. It gets that much worse. But, I want to just caution, the President of the United States, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, her team with FEMA, and the governors, have done an excellent job here of getting people ready. But they just have to be able to listen to the folks that are on the ground, that know the most, and hope that most of the people will listen to them. Because it does have long-lasting and damaging effects, but my question to the people of America is: why would you want a guy that doesn’t tell the truth about something so serious as a storm, to be the guy that actually puts his finger on the nuclear button for the — for rest of the world? It just, to me, it seems to strain credibility. People know who he is. People need to make a decision about what pathway they want to go and the choice from my perspective is really, really clear.
MIKE BARNICLE: So, Mayor Landrieu, that question that you just posted. You also have a dual role. You’re campaigning across the country for the Democratic ticket, for the Vice President to — to win the presidency in November. What do you say when you’re confronted by people across the country — good people, ordinary people who lost faith in the government, who halfway believe some of the things, as preposterous as they might be, that come from the utterances of Donald Trump or people like Marjorie Taylor Greene. What do you say to them?
LANDRIEU: Yeah, there are a couple — there are people who are legitimately confused. They don’t know who to listen to. And this is where the hard work of democracy takes place, person to person. You jsut gonna have to talk to people and convince them, and re-earn their trust. It just makes it harder if you’re pushing a rock up a hill, instead of somebody getting behind and helping you push, they’re on the other side, pushing it down. That is a matter of character. That’s a matter of someone who has either the best interest of the country at heart or their own selfish interest in heart. And the biggest point here, to make this as clear as possible, Donald Trump has always demonstrated that he is for himself. And if he has to use other people’s pain for his purpose and his power, so that he can use it and help some of his wealthy friends, he’s demonstrated time and again that he’s going to do that. If he’ll do it now, there is nothing he will not do and it’s really — it’s a damn shame, to be honest with you. But to the credit of the governors in the south, many of them Republicans, they stood with Joe Biden. They stood with Kamala Harris. They told the people what needed to be done. And even though there’s catastrophic damage, both from Helene and, of course, from Milton, we’re going to pull ourselves out of this like we do, but we can only do it if we do it together. That’s the big point. That’s the big point here.
GEIST: Yeah, the lies really are appalling always, but especially in this moment when so many people need so much help. Let me ask you, finally, mayor, just your sort of snapshot, your state of the race. Under four weeks to go, what is it important for the Harris campaign to be doing to get over the finish line?
LANDRIEU: Everything everywhere. This is going to be a very, very close race. It’s really not changed over the last eight, ten weeks, even before that. This is a fourth and goal with no time-out left on the clock and it’s just going to be about who’s got the best team, who’s got the best message, who has the most money, who’s got the best ground game, who’s the best organized, who’s the best strategy? We believe that we do. It’s going to be a very, very close race, but I think everyone would agree the Vice President has done a excellent job in the weeks she’s been here, and I think we’re going to pull it out.
