Speaker 1: There is a little bit of a rehabilitation of Melania Trump that's happening
and the latest attempt at this is the claim from a forthcoming book that Melania slammed Trump for
his dealing with COVID early in the pandemic when Trump was still president. You're blowing this is
the quote that is in this new book. There's a CNN article about this by Kevin LIPTAK, which you can
read in a couple of minutes. Trump's top general feared he would authorize a strike on Iran as his
presidency ended. His intelligence chief wondered what Russia had on him. A billionaire friend
convinced him to try buying Greenland. A half dozen top officials considered resigning en masse.
Even his wife, first lady Melania, was, quote, rattled by the coronavirus and convinced that
Trump was screwing up. According to a forthcoming book from the New York Times chief White House
correspondent Peter Baker and New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser. Set to publish next Tuesday.
In a phone call with former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie,
Melania Trump sought help convincing her husband to take the pandemic more seriously.
You're blowing this, she recalled telling her husband, the authors write. This is serious.
It's going to be really bad and you need to take it more seriously than you're taking it.
He had just dismissed her. You worry too much. She remembered him saying,
Forget it. So this really does very little positive for Melania Trump's image. And what
I mean by that is everyone at the time knew that Trump was blowing it. Everybody knew that Trump
was blowing it. It was it was absurd. Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic was pathetic.
Remember saying 15 cases will soon be zero. Would a flu shot prevent COVID? All of it.
Okay. He completely blew it and everybody knew it. And it was clear at the time. Melania Trump didn't
come out and publicly say a word about this. This doesn't absolve her of anything. Now I understand.
Is it reasonable to expect the first lady to come out and publicly say,
my husband is blowing this? No. But the point is, it's no great feat that we now
find out that she thought he was blowing it at the time. Everybody thought that Trump was
blowing it at the time. And you can actually argue it's worse. She knew how bad it was
and nothing was done. Trump's handling of COVID. And I think this is the most important takeaway.
Now, in retrospect, was a failure, not just medically. Obviously, it was a failure medically.
It was arguably one of Trump's biggest political failures. Trump could have easily sailed to
reelection if from the start of the pandemic, he said, We are going to beat this back better than
any other country. We're going to wear MAGA masks. He could have monetized the MAGA medical masks.
We are the ultimate patriots with our MAGA masks stopping COVID. We're going to listen to doctors
and we are going to be the best at this. Let's do it. And then he would have sailed to reelection.
And we know that it would have worked because it worked in other countries. There are a number of
other world leaders who had reelection campaigns during the pandemic. In the earlier phase of the
pandemic, they did handle it properly. The country rallied around them and they easily won reelection
and Trump could have. So for all of the blaming that now he's done in retrospect. Oh, the it was
the problem was they they stole it with a mail in ballots and massive dumps in the middle of
the night and all of this stuff. Trump could have easily won reelection simply by taking the
we are the patriots of all patriots by dealing with this as seriously as other countries.
And Trump would be president right now. So great. Melania knew what everybody knew. Trump
was completely blowing COVID. We're not going to give her a cookie now. More on these stories on
our Instagram, which you can find at David Pakman show. We'll take a quick break and be right back.