FILE – In this April 22, 2013 file photo, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, right, attend the 2013 Matrix New York Women in Communications Awards at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Harvard University says Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski will lead a conversation Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2017, exploring pressing issues facing the country and how public service can help. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

Who knew that New York and Washington were red states?

MSNBC’s Morning Joe took to the airwaves this morning to spread more discriminatory nonsense, this time by claiming that people who live in red states responded slower to the Wuhan virus because of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.

Axios’ @JimVandeHei: Red states were slow to respond to the Coronavirus because “They were listening to President Trump, they were watching Fox News and listening to Rush Limbo [sic]” pic.twitter.com/ETdoXprumL

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) April 2, 2020

Notice he calls Nevada a red state, which is news to me.

Regardless, aside from there being no empirical evidence that Fox News viewership somehow makes people take the virus less seriously, the claim of state response is factually incorrect. New York, which now has about half the cases and most of the deaths in the country, responded very slowly to the pandemic, with Bill de Blasio refusing to close schools for weeks and the subways still remaining open. Was it all those rubes listening to Rush Limbaugh that caused that? I think not.

“Slowly” is also relative here. Some states simply didn’t require lock downs three weeks ago while some did. That doesn’t mean they were being lax or not taking the virus seriously. Rather, they were acting to try to mitigate the very real damage that a shelter in place order causes.

Another data point is that Ohio and Maryland are red states that acted very early because their situations demanded it. Meanwhile, Gov. Cuomo was encouraging people to go about their lives into late February, even as the disease was rapidly spreading. At the same time, Nancy Pelosi spoke publicly in Chinatown and literally asked people to come and visit. Were they under the influence of Fox News? I’m gonna guess the answer is no.

Meanwhile, you have asinine comparisons like this going viral.

Aside from the general irrelevancy of this this tweet, "The South" is two words. https://t.co/SZ99aGPUNI

— Derek Hunter (@derekahunter) April 2, 2020

Yes, because the spread in the south is sparser and there are far more rural areas that require driving at least two miles to get necessities. Last I checked, “The South” are doing far better are containment and deaths than many blue states, despite there obviously being some imperfections in the responses.

The attempts by the media to drive wedges between Americans during a pandemic are just gross. But it is what it is. This is who these people are and they aren’t going to change.