Liberal Media Weaponizing COVID-19 Against Trump
The lamestream mainstream media and its bias are constant and exposed. Many Americans have nothing but contempt for that media and all that it and it’s sympathizers stand for. They need to seek objective facts instead of being liberal democrat and Chinese mouthpieces. America is in crisis and has found leadership in President Trump rallying behind him. The media should be uplifting our country instead of attacking and lying about our elected executive.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
America faces an existential threat from the COVID-19 virus, but our response is made needlessly more difficult because a partisan media has weaponized the virus as a cudgel against the president. Instead of a rallying point for America, our fight against the pandemic has become a political football.
New York Times media critic Ben Smith has even suggested that America could have averted the coronavirus crisis altogether during “two crucial weeks in late February and early March,” when Fox News Channel’s “hosts and guests, speaking to Fox’s predominantly elderly audience, repeatedly played down the threat of what would soon become a deadly pandemic.”
Let’s get the facts right.
In Mr. Smith’s cherry-picking of Fox News Channel transcripts, he ignored altogether the larger point the hosts and guests had made: the “hoax” they complained about was the partisan media onslaught against the president’s handling of the crisis, not the crisis itself.
Far from downplaying the pandemic, one of the most popular hosts on the network, Tucker Carlson, was among the earliest media figures who called attention to the crisis, as Mr. Smith himself acknowledges. Mr. Carlson’s news programming and commentary on the pandemic — like those on scores of other Fox News Channel shows — has been serious, insightful and balanced.
Mr. Smith failed to mention that another of his targets, Sean Hannity, had been among the first on any network to use his program to host a discussion of the pandemic by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Make no mistake: The complaints about media politicizing this crisis are accurate and well deserved. If anything, considering the magnitude of the crisis before us, these criticisms are understated.
Readers of The Washington Post, for instance, have been told that this deadly virus is “Trump’s Chernobyl,” while viewers of CNN’s Editor-at-Large, Chris Cillizza, learned that it is “Donald Trump’s Katrina.”
In a story that diagnosed the president as “pathological,” Slate offered a different but equally snarky take. “This isn’t Trump’s Katrina,” Slate said. “It’s stupid, slow-motion 9/11.”
Meanwhile, The New York Times’ Gail Collins’ contribution to fighting the pandemic has been to suggest a new sobriquet. Coronavirus, she suggested, should be renamed “Trumpvirus.”
At what should be — what must be — a time of national unity, a biased, one-sided national media is tearing us apart.
With millions of people at home with little else to do but play with their Smartphones, Twitter has become even more of a political war zone than usual. It has devolved into a 140-character carnival of incivility where keyboard warriors express their contempt for complete strangers who happen to support President Trump’s leadership in the crisis.
Worse yet, when the most pugnacious of the national media were called on their frenzy of partisan hate, their biggest media guns were trained on those who did so.
When Sean Hannity criticized Democrats for “using this virus as a political weapon against the president,” Salon called him a “carnival barker and Trump sycophant.”
CNN’s Brian Stelter went even further toward the ledge, citing an unnamed source purporting to be a Fox News Channel producer to claim that Fox’s coverage is “hazardous to our viewers.”
Given the media’s unbridled hostility toward the president, it might be too much to ask that for once they sheath their swords. I hope that is not the case, not now when we’re in the midst of a national emergency. There are moments when strident partisanship is singularly inappropriate, and right now is one of those.
The media’s need to control their political appetite is never greater than at a time like this. The American people are looking to them for truthful information, not politically-motivated propaganda. One need only look back to their coverage of our last national crisis — 9/11 — to see how it’s done.
• L. Brent Bozell III is founder and president of the Media Research Center.
Tags
Who is online
249 visitors
Make no mistake: The complaints about media politicizing this crisis are accurate and well deserved. If anything, considering the magnitude of the crisis before us, these criticisms are understated.
Readers of The Washington Post, for instance, have been told that this deadly virus is “Trump’s Chernobyl,” while viewers of CNN’s Editor-at-Large, Chris Cillizza, learned that it is “Donald Trump’s Katrina.”
In a story that diagnosed the president as “pathological,” Slate offered a different but equally snarky take. “This isn’t Trump’s Katrina,” Slate said. “It’s stupid, slow-motion 9/11.”
Meanwhile, The New York Times’ Gail Collins’ contribution to fighting the pandemic has been to suggest a new sobriquet. Coronavirus, she suggested, should be renamed “Trumpvirus.”
At what should be — what must be — a time of national unity, a biased, one-sided national media is tearing us apart.
With millions of people at home with little else to do but play with their Smartphones, Twitter has become even more of a political war zone than usual. It has devolved into a 140-character carnival of incivility where keyboard warriors express their contempt for complete strangers who happen to support President Trump’s leadership in the crisis.
Worse yet, when the most pugnacious of the national media were called on their frenzy of partisan hate, their biggest media guns were trained on those who did so.
When Sean Hannity criticized Democrats for “using this virus as a political weapon against the president,” Salon called him a “carnival barker and Trump sycophant.”
This article is so right on. The hate Trump TDS of the lamestream media is blatant for all to see now to the point that they are willing to use unattributed Communist Chinese propaganda talking points in order to express their hate of our President and the Americans who elected him.
Fortunately a large part of the American people no longer bother with the lamestream media or who it’s gatekeeper guardians approve of. The liberal bias of the mainstream media has been there for decades and until AM radio, cable/satellite news, and the internet came along we were all trapped by it. Now we aren’t and have gone to other news and opinion organizations to get more objective information. With most of the right having gone else for news the lamestream media types have dropped their masks and all pretenses of objectivity and are openly partisan for the left and the democrat party. We will go back!
We will never go back to the mainstream media as a source of news. They are dead to us and have no credibility whatsoever.
There you go again with "China". The far right is so predictable.
It’s not our fault that liberals and the media would rather blame our own American President for what is happening and if that means excusing China for all its actions and lack of timely honest info so be it. Right?
Crooked donnie is to blame, he IGNORED the warning
No, he did not.
To blame for what, exactly? The Corona virus? You know it came from China, right? Not America? So he didn't create it. Is he to blame for the infected people in Spain? Italy? Iran? (I can keep going like 200 times). What is he to blame for?
Which warning was that?
He MOST certainly did, what he closed to border to China and that's all. He ignored the rest, did rallies and called the urgency about the virus a democrat hoax
For ten weeks President Trump downplayed the threat of and ignored warnings about the potential severity of COVID-19 with a series of lies, exaggerations, and outright fabrications that have been well documented . And yet despite the video record of the president’s words, the White House is trying to establish an alternate reality in which Trump was a competent, focused leader who saved American people from the coronavirus.
What specifically should he have - could he have - done differently and how do we know exactly how many lives would have been saved? I have no doubt that Trump could be doing many things better than he has, but I suspect that is true for a lot of people, including "experts." Experts have been predicting a thing like this could happen for a long time, but many people in positions of power have avoided their chance to do anything about it.
He took some steps early on to limit the spread of the virus and was criticized for it. He is second guessed every day. Some say he does too much. Others, too little. So there's no absolute right or wrong here. I really think that people who try to blame the whole thing on him are too partisan to be fair.
The truth is, we don't even know how successful even the most paranoid and prudent efforts would have been. We can't even settle on precisely how the virus spreads. Only this week have scientists been willing to say that all people should cover their faces when going anywhere. That's brand new. So I'd say it's a little early to declare that this or that effort was not the appropriate one.
He could have taken it SERIOUSLY
* Trump declined to use the World Health Organization’s test like other nations. Back in January, over a month before the first Covid19 case, the Chinese posted a new mysterious virus and within a week, Berlin virologists had produced the first diagnostic test. By the end of February, the WHO had shipped out tests to 60 countries. Oh, but not our government. We declined the test even as a temporary bridge until the CDC could create its own test. The question is why? We don’t know but what to look for is which pharmaceutical company eventually manufactures the test and who owns the stock. Keep tuned.
George Conway
One reason I've heard that we didn't accept the WHO tests is that they weren't certified by the FDA and there was concern about false positives.
Frankly, we should have used everything at our disposal to fight this plague.
He did take it seriously. He and we did and still do mock those democrats who try to blame him for the virus that was and still is a hoax. What was the House intelligence committee doing during the lead up? What was the majority of the house doing. Maybe Nancy Pelosi should have ordered some masks and ppe’s instead of those impeachment pens? Why was the whole of December and January wasted by the house majority and the senate minority. Democrats impeached and people died. The bottom line.
Ya, he was worried about his ratings...
No, he did NOT take it seriously...He IGNORED IT and people died
Impeachment was the killer in this case. Not even an on coming pandemic could call off those rabid dogs and they killed the country. And to think that they wanted more witnesses to drag out the proceedings until the the day the whole country had to shut down. Democrats have blood on their hands.
Nope, Crooked donnie has blood on his hands for ignoring it and thinking it was going to just go poof.
I have to say I think I see zero value in using a test you think doesn't work. I can't see why we should use a bogus test just so we can claim we are testing people. Do you disagree with that?
As I said, under these circumstances we should use all available resources. The WHO tests were most likely just fine to use.
It’s just more TDS talking points parroting Chinese propaganda to transfer blame for all this from China and the WHO to Americans.
Also should have never shut down the pandemic response team that President Obama put in place.
tRump is a bumbling incompetent fool
Some Americans hate our President so much that even during a national crisis brought to us by a foreign power that instead of seeking national unity like rational people on both sides have actually done, they would rather believe the talking points of that offending power that harmed us to keep their irrational hatred of our elected national leader fed. It’s sad really.
Maybe if the idiot in chief acted PRESIDENTIAL and not like a spoiled child he'd get more respect....act like a buffoon, be treated like a buffoon
asking an awful lot for a President of the United States
I know, it's just sad to see what the office of the president has been reduced to, a crooked lying sack of shit that is trump
And there you go again protecting "China!" The far left is so predictable.
I know. Amazing isn't it.
People working against their own self interest simply because they hate Trump.
Amazing .....
And they don't even seem to care that people no longer trust them.
I like it when they accuse this old cold war warrior of being a Russian bot ...... just warms my cockles it does ......
They called those they hated Putin's poodles! Well, now we should call them Xi's poodles - at least we would have a grain of truth with it.
If a crisis like this can't bring them around, nothing will i'm afraid.
Can you imagine if the country had a leftist bias media during the Pearl Harbor attack? They'd be asking why we provoked the Japanese - the Japanese, whom we couldn't go to war with because they were Asian! Race would have to be injected into it!
Actually that was going on but just to a MUCH lesser degree. Had there been the mass media and instant news we have today, the Japanese and especially the Germans would be stroking their useful idiots in the US as well.
Especially Germany. A lot of sympathy for Germany in the US in the late 30's and early 40's
Is that why FDR got away with the Japanese internment camps?
Hard to argue that step back then. Much easier in hindsight but there were detractors back then. A very small minority but detractors just the same.
Kinda like the severely TDS ridden today ..... a very small minority. A lot of people don't like Trump but few hate him enough to actually defend China over the USA. That minority ....
Um-hum! And the press back then was at the very least honest. Truth mattered.
That minority is well represented here....
And the left is so damn blind. How many times does China have to bite us in the ass with a pandemic before some get the damn point?
Good point. If Dems win the Presidency and senate this year we will again be managing our decline and leading from behind the Chinese.
What kind of rational analysis results in the conclusion that Trump is somehow responsible for the spread of a virus that originated on the other side of the world, is present in virtually every country on Earth, and is still not yet well understood in terms of how it spreads?
There is nothing rational about TDS or those afflicted by it.
Yep, Trump DENIAL syndrome is rampant
Yes, you are still in denial that Trump is your President.
Nope, you're in denial that he is the WORST president this country has ever had
That is possibly the most obtuse statement ever made on NT.
Non TDS ridden historians will judge it much differently than that. As they should.
Trump is a very good America first President of The United States 🇺🇸 of America.
He certainly isn't the worst.
Saying so is just rampant TDS on parade.
It’s almost entertaining seeing them rant about it. I only hope to see the usual suspects here saying it for four more years!
Deny once again
It IS entertaining to see you deny
We aren’t denying that President Trump is a great American President. Because that is exactly what he is! 🇺🇸
You are denying that he is the WORST president
I know I would rather have president Trump lead us back to prosperity after this devastating virus than that piece of shit Obama. Heaven help us if the village idiot Biden somehow happens to win...
That is the bottom line.
👍👏🗽
Warnings Ignored: A Timeline of Trump’s COVID-19 Response
" During the critical period between the outbreak in China and the landfall of coronavirus in America, Donald Trump was warned about our general vulnerabilities and the specific actions his administration needed to take to avoid the worst. This is the timeline of how he ignored them."
Great information.
OK and can you quantify what difference that made? This thing is in almost every country on Earth, several of which have more infections and death per capita than the United States. What is their excuse? Also Trump?
It’s just another never Trump source by a neocon affiliated with the Lincoln project. Nothing more.
What about the time line of democrat star chambers in two house committees and the floor debate and then tying down the senate to nothing but the witch hunt. Even with the impeachment distraction Trump created a wuhan virus commission which the democrats criticized and the travel ban which democrats derided. So when Dems blame Trump we won’t debate or share discussion with them on it,!we will simply say that because of their witch hunt phony impeachment distraction, Americans died and leave it at that.
At this point in time, no one can 'quantify' anything, simply because we don't have or aren't given the information. However, that still does not justify his ignoring what he knew was coming. Of course, just to make things even, the bureaucracy of the FDA and the CDC didn't help matters.
Was Donald Trump Distracted from the Coronavirus Threat by Impeachment?
"Trump’s administration, however, was not paralyzed, even with the president preoccupied. On January 23, David Graham of The Atlantic argued that “even as the president’s impeachment trial moves forward, the White House is acting aggressively on a range of policy proposals that are politically, legally, or morally suspect, wagering—probably correctly—that the press and the people will mostly overlook them amid the drama in the Senate.”
To the extent that impeachment was consuming the finite attention of senior policymakers in the White House and on Capitol Hill, we can only be thankful that Senate Republicans wrapped up the trial by voting down additional witnesses on January 31. Had the Democrats gotten their wish, Washington would have been consumed for additional critical weeks into February looking backward at Ukraine instead of forward at the threat of the virus.
The American response to the coronavirus was, in retrospect, too slow and too complacent. There is plenty of blame to go around. As Jim Geraghty has detailed , any accounting begins with China, which misled the international community about the nature and scope of the original epidemic in Wuhan. The World Health Organization was at best gullible in relying on Chinese assurances to insist , into mid-January, that “preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in Wuhan, China.” And, yes, our own leaders dropped the ball, too.
...
Impeachment, however, didn’t cause Trump to claim on January 22 that “we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China” or to tweet thanks to Xi Jinping two days later for China’s “efforts and transparency.” Nor can the failures of Trump and other federal officials to take the outbreak seriously after the end of impeachment be blamed on the distractions of January.
Presidents are supposed to be able to do multiple things at once, but they are also human, and this president is more easily distracted than most. History is full of examples of governments caught looking the wrong way at the wrong time because their leaders were too busy putting out other fires. The British Cabinet spent the early summer of 1914 worried about the Irish question instead of the dispute between Austria and Serbia over the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, until, as Winston Churchill wrote later, “The parishes of Fermanagh and Tyrone faded back into the mists and squalls of Ireland, and a strange light began immediately, but by perceptible graduations, to fall and grow upon the map of Europe.” Much of the story of America’s delayed reaction to the coronavirus can be told without mention of impeachment, but it is hard to deny that Washington was looking in the wrong direction until a strange light again began to fall and grow upon the map of the world."
As to star chambers, the only one I am aware of is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Because they believed China's useful idiot at WHO.
And Trump has been the FISA star chamber courts biggest victim.
It seems to me that notwithstanding the USA is the world's bastion of free speech and free expression, the right wing is attempting to criticize and smother the left for voicing their opinion that the right wing demi-god Donald Trump may have been somewhat wrong in how he handled the whole matter of the virus spread.
I understand that the New York Times is now publishing a series indicating how the whole matter has been mishandled.
In my opinion, finger-pointing and blaming was really NOT the way to solve the crisis.
You mean the the lamestream media is now parroting Communist Chinese talking points having consumed the kool aid due to their need to hate President Trump...
I thought that in America there was such a thing as free speech and free expression - and the right to criticize Are you telling me I'm wrong?
Ironic, isn't it?
There is free speech. I remember back in the Cold War there were some far left democrats who preferred dealing with the Soviet Union to dealing with Reagan and its no different now with them preferring Communist China to Trump.