It started as these things do, on social media. One Wshington Post writer Mekita Rivas tweeted, "Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The US population is 327 million. He could have given each American $1 million and still have money left over. I feel like a $1 million check would be life-changing for most people. Yet he wasted it all on ads and STILL LOST."
Some of the people that saw the tweet mocked the obviously dumb arithmetic. Quick calculation (327 000 000 × $1 000 000 = $327 Trillion) shows that her tweet is an 'unmitigated dumpsterfire.'
Yet Rivas initially doubled down in another tweet, "blah blah math blah blah people are telling me my numbers are wrong but the point still stands: he could easily afford to give everyone $1 million and literally never notice."
Apparently the staff and editors at MSNBC agree with Mekita 'the mathematician' Rivas.
During a segment on billionaire Mike Bloomberg's failed presidential campaign on MSNBC, host Brian Williams referred to Rivas' tweet. "When I read it tonight on social, it kind of all became clear," he said before reading the tweet for his viewers.
After reading the tweet Williams turned to his guest Mara Gay a New York Times' reporter, who said, "It's true. It's disturbing. It does, it does suggest, you know, what we are talking about here. Which is, there's too much money in politics..."
The MSNBC segment drew even more attention to Rivas' two days-old tweet. A clip of the segment circulating on the internet has been watched by millions already and all involved - MSNBC, Wiiliams, Rivas and Gay - have been widely mocked or 'ratioed'(internet-speak!).
BBC presenter Andrew Neil @afneil tweeted, "Look at this. Even for US cable news talk, this is a level of stupidity that might never be matched. And it involves an MSNBC anchor and a member of the New York Times board!!!"
Far left Youtuber Kyle Kulinski @kylekulinski tweeted, "I found it. The dumbest thing ever on TV. It’ll never top this."
Justin Wolfers @JustinWolfers tweeted a clip of the the segment, writing "Kinda hard to watch this and not see a crisis of innumeracy in (some corners of) journalism."
Aceof Swords @AnAceofSwords tweeted, "blah blah blah my numbers are off by about a million but the point still stands because I'm a narcissistic fuckwitted dunning-kreuger poster child who can be wrong x 1 million but I still think I'm smarter than you. Cretinous, arrogant fucking clowns over at Mekita Rivas & co."
Crass Crowler @AnimeWacky tweeted "Re: Mekita Rivas and Bloomberg giving everybody a million bucks: the fact a statement so stupid and obviously wrong got repeated uncritically on a major network just underscores that the "elites" are fucking morons with good connections."
To understand the left-wing mentality that comes up with such tweet, the key words are "...I feel like..."
A typical leftist operates more on 'feelings', emotion and wishful thinking than on reality.
Mekita Rivas has set her twitter account to 'private' and added "I know, I’m bad at math." to her bio. Mara Gay retweeted some people consoling her. Brian Williams remains one of the dumbest hosts on TV. Dumb all around!