Beth already tackled Nancy Pelosi's rote repetition of a debunked anti-Trump coronavirus talking point on national television yesterday. As I've written on multiple occasions, there are some legitimate grounds for criticism vis-a-vis the president's rhetoric and attitude toward the growing pandemic, especially early on. And despite broadly making the correct moves since mid-March (when basically the entire media-political class started to wake up to the intensity of the threat), Trump still undercuts himself with impulsive outbursts like this. In other words, opponents seeking reasons to attack him have plenty of safe, fair terrain on which to operate.
But Pelosi could not help herself, returning to the "hoax" smear that has been discredited by multiple fact-checkers, even including left-leaning PolitiFact. Pelosi's dishonest broadside elicited no pushback or correction from ABC's anchor. Over on "Fox News Sunday," Pelosi defended her late February decision to publicly urge people to flock to San Francisco's Chinatown neighborhood, which critics say placed political correctness over public health -- or at least demonstrated that she did not understand how serious the pandemic would be:
Fox News' Chris Wallace calls out Nancy Pelosi for promoting tourism during the coronavirus pandemic. pic.twitter.com/yg4Tgt12ln
— TV News HQ (@TVNewsHQ) April 19, 2020
Here's what Pelosi could have said: "The virus originated in China, but that's not the fault of Asian-Americans. At the time, we didn't have nearly the amount of information about the nature of the virus that we do now, so my goal was to underscore that it would not be fair to scapegoat people of Asian descent here in America because of the Chinese government's actions. And if you check the record, our city and state have been very successful at mitigating and containing coronavirus." That would have been a defensible answer. But again, she could not help herself. In that short clip, she dangerously conflates criticism of China with discrimination against Asian-Americans -- which is literally a Chinese Communist Party damage control talking point. Watch this:
Watch this whole thing: pic.twitter.com/xp17mSUQG4
— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) April 18, 2020
She also goes a step further, directly blaming the Trump administration for some idiots' misplaced bigotry and blame (relatedly, read this post on the rampant coronavirus-fueled xenophobia and racism in China). It is absolutely correct and necessary to hold China and their toadies at the WHO accountable for what's happened, but even within that context, President Trump has repeatedly warned against directing any backlash at Asians living in America. Pelosi acts as if this never happened, in her endless quest to blast the president, regardless of the facts. What evidence does she have that Trump said anything at all about making "Asian Americans" a "target" as she asserts? Also, for good measure, she calls the virus "the flu" toward the end of the snippet, another sloppy inaccuracy.
With Pelosi and other Democrats running interference for the authoritarians of Beijing -- fixating, as ever, on Trump -- I'll leave you with China's puppet government in Hong Kong exploiting the current crisis to arrest pro-democracy leaders, whose millions of supporters cannot engage in mass protests on their behalf, due to the pandemic. This is evil:
While we’re focusing on the pandemic, China making sure Hong Kong doesn’t have a democratic future. https://t.co/s6CXyoUvxP
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) April 18, 2020
A very dark day in Hong Kong with arrests of some of the territory’s most prominent pro-democracy figures https://t.co/wAbtVlWR9L
— Gady Epstein (@gadyepstein) April 18, 2020
More than a dozen leading pro-democracy activists and former lawmakers in Hong Kong were arrested on Saturday in connection with the protests that raged in the city last year, the biggest roundup of prominent opposition figures in recent memory. The arrests signaled a broader crackdown on the antigovernment movement that roiled the semiautonomous city last year, one of the most significant challenges to Communist Party rule in decades. Beijing and pro-government supporters in the city have called for lawmakers to pass national security laws that residents worry would allow the mainland authorities to further encroach upon the territory’s civic freedoms. The high-profile arrests were made as Hong Kong battled to contain the coronavirus outbreak, which has helped quiet down the huge street protests...
The government of China is behaving utterly outrageously on nearly every front that the West purports to hold dear, but many of our elites aren't interested in talking about it. Speaking of, since they're not terribly busy these days, I wonder if the NBA's leading lights of wokeness have anything to say about...well, any of this. They've had plenty of time to "study" the issues, or whatever.
Editor's Note: Want to support Townhall so we can keep telling the truth about China and the virus they unleashed on the world? Join Townhall VIP and use the promo code WUHAN to get 25% off VIP membership!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member