Where is Andrew Yang when you need him? MSNBC’s Brian Williams and Mara Gay of the New York Times attempted to put former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign spending on television advertising during his brief presidential bid when they failed miserably.
Williams quoted a tweet that was making the rounds on social media when Gay agreed with the flawed message, despite simple math showing the numbers clearly were not true.
The tweet claimed that Michael Bloomberg could have paid $1 million to every citizen in the United States rather than spending $500 million on advertisements. There’s one problem: the United States has a population of 327 million.
Sure, 500 people could have each received $1 million, but that is a far cry from “every American.” In fact, if Bloomberg would have split his advertising money among all Americans, it would have come out to a mere $1. 52 — so you could barely buy an Arizona Tea and Honey Bun.
Watch the embarrassing moment below.
“What’s truly pathetic is that the tweet was seen by numerous people before being made into a graphic and shown on the air and STILL no one stopped this humiliation from happening,” one Twitter user wrote after the segment began going viral. “This is peak fake news.”
Of course, Williams and Gay were the butt of plenty of other jokes on social media.
Math. It’s hard.
