‘Morning Joe’ Calls Out Trump for Contradicting Nurse Practitioner on PPE Shortages: ‘So Embarrassing’

Trump told a medical professional he’d “heard” that access to protective gear was “tremendous”

MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough on Thursday criticized President Donald Trump’s televised Wednesday interaction with a nurse practitioner in the Oval Office, calling it “so embarrassing.”

The duo rolled the clip multiple times during Thursday’s “Morning Joe” in which a nurse practitioner explained to Trump and viewers thataccess to protective gear has been “sporadic” during the cornavirus pandemic and that she has been reusing the same N95 mask for several weeks.

“Sporadic for you but not for a lot of other people,” Trump replied in the Oval Office encounter, held on National Nurses Day. “I’ve heard the opposite.” He blamed the Obama administration for the shortage of emergency supplies, then insisted he’s heard access is “tremendous.”

Brzezinksi was not impressed: “It’s just so embarrassing on so many levels.”

Later in the show, the MSNBC host asked Dr. Nadia Abuelezam of Boston College whether access to personal protective equipment has been “tremendous,” and Abuelezam replied that while larger hospitals in the Boston area seem to be doing well with PPE, smaller ones have been suffering.

After another showing of the clip, Scarborough reacted: “Who is he? What planet is he from? Who has a nurse in the White House, corrects a nurse?”

Brzezinski chalked it up as “a look at what the president does and does not want to hear.”

Watch her call the moment “embarrassing” above.

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