MSNBC host Chris Hayes recently tweeted,

“Liberals were right about George W Bush and they’re right about Donald Trump. The Republican Party is a political party incapable of governing the nation without ushering in death, devastation, and national humiliation. Just the facts.”

Um… what? I admit that I’m confused. To what “death, devastation, and national humiliation” could Hayes be referring for which he blames President Trump, unless he means the COVID-19 pandemic? It almost has to be, doesn’t it? What else could he have meant?

Surely Hayes couldn’t be suggesting that Trump should be held responsible for the fact that the Wuhan coronavirus spread to the U.S. -- he must be referring to Trump’s response to the virus, because it would be foolish to blame a natural disaster on human error.

Governor Andrew Cuomo seems to have confirmed my suspicion that Hayes was referring to the virus when he had the unmitigated gall to describe the COVID-19 situation as “Trump’s scandal” that makes Watergate and Nixon look innocent by comparison. This is the same Governor Cuomo who ordered people diagnosed with COVID-19 placed in nursing homes, directly causing the deaths of thousands of elderly New Yorkers by his own actions after he had demanded 30,000 ventilators (which he didn’t need) and a hospital ship (which he got but never used) from President Trump. What did he want or need that President Trump failed to provide that would have saved the life of even one New Yorker? Nobody asked that question. On a side note, the definition of the word chutzpah has just been edited in the dictionary and is now simply a photo of Andrew Cuomo. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words, right? 

So, given that it seems reasonable to assume Chris Hayes was indeed talking about the “death, devastation, and national humiliation” that resulted from COVID-19, let’s dive a little deeper into the facts. As one conservative already responded to Hayes on Twitter, “Citation needed.” Another asked if he’d noticed what’s been happening in Democrat-run cities lately… an excellent question.

To date, the U.S. has officially attributed 137,000 deaths to the COVID-19 pandemic. More than half of that total have occurred in states run by Democrat governors, and Democrat mayors in charge of their largest cities. What do the top five worst states have in common? In terms of raw numbers, New York has suffered the most COVID-19 deaths by far, more than 32,000 to date. Cuomo is the governor, and fellow Democrat Bill de Blasio the mayor of New York City. New Jersey is second worst with 15,600 deaths, followed by Massachusetts with over 8,300 reported deaths. Fourth worst is Illinois with more than 7,300 victims of the Wuhan virus, and fifth comes California with just over 7,000 COVID-related fatalities, for a grand total of 70,200 dead American citizens from those five states alone. Phil Murphy is the Democrat governor of New Jersey, and Ras Baraka is currently the Democrat mayor of Newark, its largest city. Charlie Baker is the exception, a “moderate” (spineless) Republican governor of Massachusetts, but the mayor of Boston is Democrat Marty Walsh. And of course, California has Democrats Gavin Newsom and Eric Garcetti installed as governor and mayor of Los Angeles, respectively.

Do you see the pattern beginning to emerge?

Just for the record, Pennsylvania and Michigan come in as sixth and seventh worst for COVID-19 deaths in terms of raw numbers, adding another 13,000 to the total death count.

I’m sure readers will remember that Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer is a Democrat (and potential Biden running mate). So is Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania. However, the reader may not be aware that when I searched the Internet to find out the name and party affiliation of the mayor of Philadelphia, Google mentioned that someone else had asked the question, “Has there ever been a Republican mayor of Philadelphia?” Apparently, there haven’t been many Republican mayors of Philadelphia, and it’s probably safe to assume none recently.

Everywhere in America where death and disaster are at their worst, Democrats are currently in office and at least theoretically in charge.  If Hayes wasn’t referring to Trump’s management of the coronavirus pandemic, he could have been thinking of the Black Lives Matter “peaceful” protests that have gradually evolved into violent riots, but if we look at the five worst cities, we’re going to find that liberal Democrats in charge. Jacob Frey in Minneapolis, Bill de Blasio in New York, Lori Lightweight (sorry, I meant Lightfoot) in Chicago, Jenny Durkan in Seattle, and Washington D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser have all been derelict in their duty to protect their cities from arson, looting, and other acts of domestic terrorism.

The Democrat Party is currently playing a very dangerous game. Rather than harshly condemning the violence and terror of Antifa, they have fomented it. De Blasio had the nerve to ask the federal government for a bailout while helping paint a giant Black Lives Matter message on the street under Trump Tower after cutting $1B dollars from the police budget, which is insane. Trump has already rejected the request from Minnesota after the Democrat governor and mayor allowed $500 million in damages to the city after George Floyd was murdered.

The Democrat “plan” was probably to allow the chaos to degenerate public safety to the point where Trump was forced to use the military to restore order, so then they could justify making comparisons between Trump and Hitler. Instead, Trump wisely observed the separation of powers dictated by the Constitution that defines any powers not expressly assigned to the federal government are implicitly granted to the state and demanded that the local authority take responsibility and restore order.

Instead of protecting their own constituents, Democrats use their voters like political pawns, to be sacrificed if necessary, in order to win the game no matter the cost. It seems obvious (at least to me) that Democrats perceive some political advantage to either creating or fomenting as much chaos and destruction as possible within the relative safety of their own political domains in order to blame their problems on President Trump. 

Remember Chief Justice John Roberts famously wrote in his decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act: “It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” 

Nor is it the job of the President of the United States to protect the people of New York from the politicians they fairly elected.  As ObamaCare architect famously admitted, Democrats rely on the stupidity of the American voter in order to get things done. It will be up to the voters of New York to decide whether they should blame their own governor or blame the president for being the state with the highest death count from COVID-19 in the U.S.

Chris Hayes was wrong from the very start, beginning with his first three words: “Liberals were right…”  Liberals are leftists, and rarely if ever right.

John Leonard is a freelance writer and most recently the lead editor of the Rootstock series of epic fantasy novels. You may connect with him on Facebook or contact him through his website at southernprose.com