President Trump provided facts and context to reporters in the White House briefing room Monday. Mainstream news networks could not bring themselves to look.
The media is anxiously rewriting history to blame the president for a pandemic borne out of a communist regime’s coverup. “He could have seen what was coming,” the New York Times now claims, in a report that argues the economy should have been closed back in February.
Back when Nancy Pelosi said, “come to Chinatown”? When the New York Times called travel restrictions and quarantines “draconian”? When the Times attacked President Trump, during a pandemic, for being a “germophobe” who “frequently uses hand sanitizer”? Turns out it was Democrats and the media who lacked foresight.
“Some Experts Worry as a Germ-Phobic Trump Confronts a Growing Epidemic,” the Times wrote on Feb. 10. The Times used Joe Biden adviser Ron Klain to criticize President Trump for having the “wrong instincts,” falsely accusing the president of being “anti-science, anti-expert,” and “xenophobic.”
In actuality, it is the media’s instincts – to reflexively oppose anything the president says or does – that has left them constantly proven wrong. As a result, they are the only institution during the pandemic with underwater approval.
First it was President Trump’s travel restrictions on Jan. 31. The Washington Post immediately turned to former Obama officials to challenge the president. Ali Khan, an Obama CDC official, said it was the wrong move: “There should be no reason to put undue burdens on people around travel.”
In late January, NBC News was more concerned about “xenophobia” than the virus itself, claiming travel restrictions are “race-based” measures. Time declared “xenophobia” a “pre-existing condition.” Joe Biden cried “hysterical xenophobia.”
CNN said “it could backfire.” Politico claimed the quarantine and travel ban “could stoke racial discrimination,” citing complaints from Democrats and the World Health Organization, which had just spread Chinese disinformation that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the virus. The WHO said travel bans would increase “fear and stigma, with little public health benefit."
The same day the New York Times worried about the president’s hand sanitizer use, they reported the real “risks” posed by the virus were “reviving stigma for China.” China has “made great strides in public health,” the Times said, before quoting communist party officials who claimed China had “been unfairly singled out,” and a victim of “an overreaction by the United States.”
The Democrat and media rewrite: a “race-based” “xenophobic” “draconian” “overreaction” for “no reason” is now “insufficient” and a “halting response.”
The travel restrictions on China, and later Europe, did save lives. But that is not all the president did. While senators were stuck spinning fidget spinners during a pointless Democrat impeachment, the CDC was giving special emergency authorization to develop coronavirus tests. The Trump administration was engaging the private sector like no other. Project Airbridge has delivered half a million N95 masks, 370 million gloves, 25 million surgical masks, and nearly 5 million gowns to the front lines. Governors across the board, of both parties, have praised the administration’s response.
Rather than report on this fairly, with a level-head, the media keeps looking for their next outrage. If the travel ban was not racist, the name of the virus would be. That would not work, since the media spent weeks calling it the “Chinese virus,” too.
The media seized on President Trump’s comment that the virus “hopefully becomes weaker” in warmer weather. Six weeks later research showed “warm, humid weather could slow” the coronavirus. When President Trump expressed doubt in the WHO’s 3.4 percent projected mortality rate, the media decried his opinion as “misinformation.” Newer research dropped it to 0.66 percent, and Dr. Fauci and CDC Director Robert Redfield note that due to asymptomatic cases the rate “may be considerably less than 1 percent.” “Personally,” President Trump had said weeks earlier, “I think the number is way under 1 percent.”
The next media meltdown came when President Trump, who was delivering thousands of ventilators to New York, suggested the city would not need 40,000. During the city’s peak, 5,000 ventilators were used. Not a single American has been denied a ventilator.
Nothing is quite like the media’s crusade against hydroxychloroquine, a 1950s-era drug they likely had never heard of. Bachelor star Colton Underwood and Detroit Rep. Karen Whitsett, a Democrat, are not afraid to say the anti-malaria medicine saved their lives. But when the president expressed hope, and his administration gave approval to let doctors prescribe it, and give patients the choice, the media lost their collective mind.
Democrat Gretchen Whitmer can flip-flop and ask the president for help securing emergency supplies of hydroxychloroquine, with no adverse reaction from the press. Reporters are optimistic about the ongoing trial in New York, but only when they ask Andrew Cuomo.
This double standard is why the president calls the media out.
“All they did was took some clips, and they just ran them for you,” the president said, after he showed the media in their own words. “And the reason they did is to keep you honest. Now, I don’t think that’s going to work.”
Unfortunately for the public, President Trump is right. Again.