Donald Trump has hated the media since Day 1 of his presidency, but it can be argued that if anything they’ve gone easy on him, not saying the things they really want to say. But ever since he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, the gloves have been slowly coming off. CNN’s Anderson Cooper is no longer trying to hide his contempt for him and his cronies. And now even Brian Williams, MSNBC’s most staid and old school anchor, is offering a deeply and witheringly sarcastic take on the outgoing president.
Williams was responding to a suggestion made by old Trump pal Geraldo Rivera, who’s been among the too few in his circle to call bull on 45’s baseless claims of voter fraud. But that hasn’t stopped Rivera from offering a bizarre and pointless olive branch to Trump, in an attempt to make him finally concede the election: Why not name the COVID-19 vaccine after him? Well, for one reason, it would be an insult to Dolly Parton. But Williams thought that thinly veiled sarcasm was the real way to put out this fire.
Love that people are just now noticing how good Brian Williams is at reaming Trump. He’s been really good at it for a really long time but this is some next level shit.
pic.twitter.com/hBRIeF1TYH
— Holly Figueroa O’Reilly (@AynRandPaulRyan) November 21, 2020
“You know, Geraldo raises a good point there,” Williams began. “It’s possible we don’t give the president enough credit for his FDR-like devotion to tackling this virus — his laser-like focus, his daily devotion, the sympathy he’s always expressing to the families of the quarter-million dead.”
He continued:
“Even the way the president lectures us in that way to ‘please wear a mask and stop the spread.’ And he’s always advocated injections. Geraldo may be onto something. What Trump Steaks did for the hungry, what Trump Water did for the thirsty in our nation, what Trump University did to lift up the uneducated in our country. Well, along comes Trump: The Vaccine. Possibilities, I think you’ll agree, are endless.”
On their face, Williams words may seem indistinguishable from the kind of fulsome and dubious praise that make Trump happy. But as Williams spoke, the screen was filled with ironic images: of Trump playing golf, of him posing for his propaganda videos made to make him look stronger than he is, of him generally being a useless buffoon who’s done next-to-nothing as the people who voted for him died en masse. It’s the kind of reverence Trump deserves after four long years and for however long it takes for him to publicly admit he’s a loser.