New York Times editor Mara Gay and MSNBC’s Brian Williams showed off their superior math skills last night on The 11th Hour.
Mekita Rivers, a writer at Glamour and The Washington Post, posted that Michael Bloomberg could have used the $500 million he spent on ads on the American people. She said he could have given everyone $1 million and have money to spare.
I guess you’d become a millionaire if Bloomberg gave you $1.53!
You’ll laugh at this. Rivas admits in her protected Twitter profile that she’s bad at math.
To make matters worse, Gay and Williams never caught the bad math. You know the producers and editors of the show saw the tweet, but no one said anything.
Thing is, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Rivers’ math was way off!
From Mediaite:
“You see it as a possibility, if he wants to spend a billion bucks beating this guy, he could do it?” Williams asked Gay in a discussion of Bloomberg’s primary ad spending and the billionaire’s promise to continue his political ad campaign through November to defeat President Donald Trump.“Absolutely. Somebody tweeted recently that actually with the money he’s spent, he could have given every American a million dollars,” Gay said, as Rivas’ false claim appeared on screen.“I’ve got it. Let’s put it on the screen,” Williams said, clearly not seeing the faulty math either. “When I read it tonight on social media, it kind of all became clear. Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. U.S. Population, $327 million. Don’t tell us if you’re ahead of us on the math,” he added, not realizing that his viewers were ahead of him on the math, because he and his guest were botching it so badly.“He could have given each American $1 million and have had lunch money left over. It’s an incredible way of putting it,” he added.In fact, it’s an incredibly wrong way of putting it. But Gay certainly didn’t catch on.“It’s an incredible way of putting it. It’s true,” Gay said incredibly, as, still, no one on the show stepped in to shut down this ongoing, embarrassing display of innumeracy. “It does suggest, you know, what we’re talking about here, which is there is too much money in politics. It makes it difficult because what we want in politics — the point is to have competition, and the point is to have the best candidates and have people from all backgrounds be able to run. So that gives people real choice, not just super PACS and dark money flooding elections or even just a single billionaire with good intentions.”
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