An NBC reporter is being mercilessly mocked online after he accidentally suggested that a Florida gubernatorial candidate could become the ‘first black president.’
Kerry Sanders was covering the Florida Governors race between Democrat Andrew Gillum and Republican Ronald Dion DeSantis for the network on Tuesday.
Discussing the possibility Gillum, who is black, could win the election, Sanders excitedly announced: ”He will be the first black President!’
Moments later, he realized his mistake.
Kerry Sanders (pictured) was covering the Florida Governors race between Democrat Andrew Gillum and Republican Ronald Dion DeSantis for the network on Tuesday
Discussing the possibility Gillum, who is black, could win the election, Sanders excitedly announced: ”He will be the first black President!’
‘I’m sorry. He will be the first black governor,’ he added.
But it was too late.
The blunder was immediately noticed by viewers who took to Twitter to mock the reporter.
‘Reporter on NBC just said if Andrew Gillum wins he’ll become “America’s first black president” lmfaoooooooo’ one Twitter user wrote.
‘LOL! The boys and girls over at @NBCNews are giddy,’ tweeted Eric Mrozek.
‘The dipsh*t on NBC…’ James Crews added.
Another user suggested it could be a ‘#Freudianslip.’
Of course, not only is Gillum not running for the presidency, but President Barack Obama was the first black president of the United States.
Obama, whose father was black, became the first African American to take office, 2009, serving two full terms.
Gillum, a former Mayor of Tallahassee, Florida, is currently losing to DeSantis in the governor race by a small margin.
Neither NBC nor Sanders has commented on the slip up.
‘MISFIRE’:MSNBC accidentally posted a graphic showing results in the Florida governor’s race before votes were counted. The network immediately corrected the error on air, attributing it to ‘inadvertently populated’ fields and test numbers
‘Obviously, we do not yet have any vote totals here, the night before the election,’ said host Chris Hayes
And it wasn’t the only misfire by NBC.
On Monday, the nation got an impossibly early peek at the outcome of the hotly-contested Florida governor’s race on NBC on Monday – after the network mistakenly posted a graphic of the results before the polls even opened.
Deadline Hollywood, which posted a screen grab of the graphic, showed it had Gillum grabbing a narrow victory. It had precise vote totals with a 49.4 to 48.8 and a gap of fewer than 46,000 votes.
An embarrassed host Chris Hayes filled in viewers on the mishap, saying the network had ‘inadvertently populated some test numbers’ and put the result on the broadcast.
Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSantis are engaged in one of the nation’s top governor’s races
He offered the explanation in the form of a ‘quick clarification’ to viewers.
‘Just want to say, earlier this hour, we showed a graphic of the Florida gubernatorial race.’
Hayes said it ‘may have caught your eye because our system had inadvertently populated some test numbers. Obviously, we do not yet have any vote totals here, the night before the election,’ he noted.
‘That was a misfire. Don’t worry. I was pretty confused when I saw it up there,’ he added.