George Packer Tells ‘Morning Joe’: ‘Trump Seems to Be Collaborating with the Virus’

The Atlantic‘s George Packer spoke to MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Thursday about his new piece where he talks about President Donald Trump’s failures on Coronavirus. Packer offered a grim assessment of the administration’s approach, comparing it to collaborating with the Nazis.

“If you use the health metaphor, our body politic today is much weaker today than it was 9/11 and weaker than it was 2008 during the financial crisis and the beginning of the Great Recession,” Packer said.

“We’re now more polarized, more divided. Our government has been demoralized by constant attack from within and without. It’s been defunded. Our economy, in some ways, is more unequal now than at any time in the last 40 years, when inequality has been a growing problem.”

“All of those symptoms made us an easy target for Coronavirus to really wreak havoc in our society,” he said. “I think what’s different now is the virus is more personal, more intimate, and also more broad scale than either the recession or 9/11 and our response is weaker because, for years, we’ve allowed these ills to go untreated.”

“Now, with leadership in Washington that almost seems at times to be collaborating with the virus. I compared Trump, who has called himself a wartime president, to the French general, Marshall Petain, who was the — in charge when the Nazis invaded and who essentially gave up and allowed them to occupy the country, and created his own republic.”

“It’s a harsh comparison but, at times, Trump seems to be collaborating with the virus and doing its work for it. All of those things made us a much easier target. Recovery is going to be much harder this time around.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.