House Intel Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) appeared on Chris Hayes’s “All In” program on MSNBC Friday to discuss the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, the new committee launched by Democrats to help Joe Biden’s presidential campaign oversee the Trump administration’s handling of the crisis, and of course to dunk on Trump himself.

But some of the comments Schiff made during the interview have sparked backlash. During the segment, Schiff despicably tried to tie the Senate’s acquittal of Trump in February to the over 50,000 American deaths that have happened since the outbreak began here (transcribed):

“Well there’s one thing that really I have to say haunts me from the trial and it was before that snippet that you showed where we knew we had to answer the question to the Senators. Okay, essentially, House managers, you’ve proved him guilty, does he really need to be removed after all? We have an election in nine months. How much damage could he really do? And we posed that question to the Senate and we answered it by saying that he could do an awful lot of damage.

But frankly, Chris, I don’t think we had any idea how much damage he would go on to do in the months ahead. There are 50,000 Americans now who are dead, in significant part because of his incompetence, because of his inability to think beyond himself and put the country first. I don’t think we would have ever anticipated that his brand of narcissism and his brand of incompetence, sometimes his brand of malevolence would be so fatal to the American people.”

.⁦@RepAdamSchiff⁩ suggests “50,000 Americans” are dead because Trump wasn’t impeached

Republicans said “How much damage could he really do? … I don’t think we had any idea how much damage he would go on to do … There are 50,000 Americans now who are dead” pic.twitter.com/QGH941MSlk

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) April 25, 2020

Schiff’s despicable comments drew strong rebukes from a number of Republicans, including Dan Bongino:

Known liar, clown, fraud, oxygen thief, serial hoaxster, and all-around garbage-person, sleazy Adam Schiff is doing everything he can to make this awful situation worse. There aren’t many people walking this planet who’ve done more damage than this sleazeball. 👇🏻👇🏻 https://t.co/84uFgXksUc

— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) April 25, 2020

Also, wasn’t the whole impeachment sham actually a distraction to both Congress and the President in terms of being able to more effectively focus on and fight the virus?

Huh?!? During the entire rise of this pandemic (Dec-Feb), you were running your sham impeachment hoax. When @DevinNunes finally got you to have a hearing on China, you hijacked it to subpoena Russians. You're a disgrace.https://t.co/JeRMYsz90Q

— BoumtjeBoumtje ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (@BoumtjeBoumtje) April 25, 2020

The irony here is that Democrats and their relentless impeachment/removal efforts indeed distracted from Trump and Congress being able to more effectively combat the virus in the early days.

Not only that, but if Trump HAD been removed from office, Mike Pence would then be President and would be in charge of things. But Pence is the head of the White House coronavirus task force, so he already is in charge of the response effort.

So, as usual, this was a total garbage hot take by Schiff, who has proven on more than one occasion how he is willing to lie through his teeth about alleged “bombshells” regarding Trump and Russia, Trump and Ukraine, etc. He simply cannot be trusted to be honest, because everything is a political game to him designed discredit Trump simply because he and his Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate are still bitter about the 2016 election results.