Pundit mocked over major math error on MSNBC blames racism, gets torched again

New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay has used her platform at the newspaper to accuse her critics of racism after being mocked over a segment on MSNBC where she and anchor Brian Williams promoted a major math error in order to argue that "there is too much money in politics."

What are the details?

Last week, Gay and Williams highlighted a tweet that read: "[Michael] Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The U.S. 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."

Gay and Williams were both mocked online and in the media for missing the obvious fact that the money Bloomberg spent would have left every American with about $1.53, yet the two "experts" carried on the segment as if it were the truth. Gay even suggested the numbers indicated that "there is too much money in politics."

But on Wednesday, Gay, who is black, responded to her critics with a piece titled, "My People Have Been Through Worse Than a Twitter Mob" and promoted it with a tweet saying, "A racist Twitter mob came for me over a trivial math mistake. I'm not going anywhere."

Twitter users overwhelmingly disagreed with Gay's assertion that she was attacked because of racism and overwhelming disagreed that her error was "trivial."

Several respondents argued that Brian Williams, who is Caucasian, was equally called out over the error and false reporting. One person wrote, "Um...Brian Willaims is white. We're laughing at him too."

Others noted that being off by roughly $1 million is not exactly a tiny mistake, while another follower asked simply, "Basic math is racist now?"

BlazeTV's Chad Prather reacted to Gay's message by tweeting, "I never considered your skin color but I sure did make a lot of fun at how far you rounded up. You have a track record of going to extremes and this is no different."

As the number of comments criticizing Gay's tweet outweighed those who gave it an approving nod at an enormous ratio, she took to blocking people who pushed back against her claims of racism.