MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle said Monday that a close presidential election will produce uncertainty, “so we all have to pray” that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden wins “a landslide.”
“And now with this whole furor over mail-in votes, we could be sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner not really knowing specifically who the president-elect of the United States is,” Barnicle told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “So we all have to pray that there’s going to be a landslide for Joe Biden in order to avoid this conflict.”
President Donald Trump has railed against mail-in ballots as a source of fraud and has claimed their use will be the “scandal of our times.”
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has floated a $3.6 billion mail-in ballot proposal, calling it “voting from home” and citing citizens’ safety amid the ongoing pandemic. (RELATED: MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle: Trump ‘Seems To Have Issues With … A Black Woman With Power’)
Barnicle suggested that the close election of 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore indicated “that Republicans are good at fixing the way we count ballots.”
He also said Congress should move quickly to pass the fourth coronavirus stimulus package, saying the Republican-controlled Senate and Trump’s administration were responsible for that not happening.
“What we’re talking about this morning, literally, is the economic present today and the economic future, near-term and long-term, for millions of American families whose lives, economically speaking, may never be the same because of the inaction of the United States Senate … and specifically Donald Trump’s administration.” (RELATED: Senior MSNBC Reporter Suggests Tanning Bed May Have Contributed To Trump’s ‘Irrational Rants’)
Senate Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee chairman John Kennedy (R-LA) speaks during a hearing, with U.S. Secretary of Treasury Steve Mnuchin, on the proposed budget estimates and justification for FY2020 for the Treasury Department at the U.S. Capitol on May 15, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Senate Democrats are attempting to insert a provision into the aid package that would prevent the use of federal agents to assist with law enforcement in America’s cities. Republican Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy has rejected his party’s $1 trillion stimulus bill, calling it “spending porn” because it includes funding for a plethora of non-coronavirus projects.
Barnicle pointed to lawmakers “wringing their hands and walking back and forth from one end of the capitol to the other” instead of appropriate another bailout bill for “millions of families that are going to sink” into an economic abyss “and never really recover.”
