‘If he keeps lying like he has been every day on stuff this important, we should, all of us should stop broadcasting it. Honestly, it’s going to cost lives…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The leftist mainstream media staked everything it had on the Russia collusion hoax and the Ukraine impeachment effort bringing down President Donald Trump.
Now, with their own credibility in shambles, they once again have put it all on the line to hype the unprecedented overreaction to a pandemic much like those encountered during the Obama administration.
But despite the ensuing coronavirus panic’s success in tanking the once-bullish economy, Trump has risen to the occasion, reinventing himself as a wartime president in response and holding daily press briefings to update the public directly.
That’s as high as he’s gotten and perhaps more striking, his approval rate on handling Covid 19 is 60%. I bet that owes something to his much-criticized briefings and the participation in them of top public-health officials. https://t.co/8HOMbY4Z3d
— Brit Hume (@brithume) March 24, 2020
Trump’s job approval hits the highest level of his presidency. It’s no coincidence that many resistance reporters want to take his Coronavirus briefings off the air. pic.twitter.com/G6n8q4tMe5
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) March 26, 2020
As Trump’s approval returned to around 49% in recent Gallup polling, with his handling of the coronavirus pandemic crisis in the 60th percentile, his kneejerk critics suddenly reinvented themselves as well, insisting that there was no need to cover the briefings.
There is no public benefit to this briefing. The networks should all cut away.
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) March 23, 2020
According to Business Insider, five major “news” networks decided to cut away from the briefing on Monday.
Somehow I feel like this has more to do with the President’s improving approval ratings than anything else….
Trump’s critics say networks should stop airing coronavirus briefings – Business Insider https://t.co/NH4rbfT0Ji
— Lisa Boothe (@LisaMarieBoothe) March 25, 2020
Pretty disgraceful that @CNN and @MSNBC have both cut away from this @WhiteHouse briefing with @realDonaldTrump and @Mike_Pence during a global pandemic. Thank you to @FoxNews for keeping Americans informed. #COVID19
— Judd Deere (@JuddPDeere45) March 23, 2020
Among those going ballistic over the success of the daily briefings were MSNBC‘s resident Trump-bashers, Joe Scarborough and Rachel Maddow.
“During these briefings, Trump has lied that the virus is ‘something that we have tremendous control over’.”
“He has promoted an unproven drug treatment.”
“He is spreading misinformation that could actually put people’s lives in danger.”https://t.co/mRyZwodeHL
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) March 24, 2020
“If it were up to me, and it’s not, I would stop putting those briefings on live TV,” Maddow fumed on her show this week, according to RealClear Politics.
“Not out of spite, but because it’s misinformation,” she claimed. “If the president does end up saying anything true, you can run it as tape. But if he keeps lying like he has been every day on stuff this important, we should, all of us should stop broadcasting it. Honestly, it’s going to cost lives.”
Other attack arms of the leftist propaganda machine echoed their solidarity, including the Daily Beast, the Atlantic and the Washington Post.
“These White House sessions—ostensibly meant to give the public critical and truthful information about this frightening crisis—are in fact working against that end,” griped Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan.
“Rather, they have become a daily stage for Trump to play his greatest hits to captive audience members,” she continued. “They come in search of life-or-death information, but here’s what they get from him instead: Self-aggrandizement… Media-bashing… Exaggeration and outright lies.”
Meanwhile, former Bill Clinton Press Secretary Joe Lockhart aptly observed that the media’s doom-and-gloom emphasis on worst-case scenarios seemed to have run its course as more people tune in seeking optimism and hope.
Gallup says more than 60% of Americans approve of the job @potus is doing.The only group with a negative rating is the media.Not hard to understand. Trump is telling people there is a magic cure,the media is reporting it straight. People want to believe in magic. It all comes due
— Joe Lockhart (@joelockhart) March 26, 2020
And NBC’s Andrea Mitchell bemoaned on her show that, in spite of everything, the Democrats’ great hope, presidential candidate Joe Biden, was failing to get any traction on offering an alternative counter-message to Trump.
“There is politics involved,” Mitchell declared on Wednesday.
“We’ve heard very little from, for instance, the more likely, most likely nominee of the Democratic Party, Joe Biden,” she continued. “He’s having difficulty getting—projecting through this crisis as the campaign goes totally on hold.”
Biden appears to have entered into seclusion, conducting many of his appearances now via telecast from a home office, in stark contrast with Trump, whom outraged leftists have panned for ignoring his own guidelines about gatherings of 10 or more people.
Yet, many have surmised that the always flub-prone former vice president, who may now be in full-fledged cognitive decline, is avoiding public appearances not only out of social-distancing necessity but to prevent possible disasters that might result from his speaking off the cuff.
Even so, the withdrawal from public hasn’t helped Biden, who has managed repeatedly to flub reading from an off-camera teleprompter. He even made a bizarre claim while being interviewed by “The View” that a coronavirus cure “will make the problem worse, no matter what,” according to Deadline.
Now, as quickly as Biden ascended in the primaries to become the inevitable nominee, worried Democrats are already jumping ship. An online movement proposed using a brokered convention process, which would force elitist superdelegates in the party to ditch the presumptive nominee and, instead, draft New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
It was unclear if Cuomo, himself were connected with the movement. However, ignoring Trump’s overtures for cooperation and his own negligence in preparing for the pandemic, Cuomo has certainly made hay of the fact that New York has become one of the epicenters of the outbreak. He has used regular media appearances as a springboard to amplify his long-running vendetta with Trump.
Betting odds now have Cuomo above Biden’s only primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, in likelihood to secure the nomination.
Andrew Cuomo is now more likely to be the Democratic nominee than Bernie Sanders, according to PredictIt. https://t.co/FhOYdcbk5j pic.twitter.com/hwK1Gl0NcN
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) March 25, 2020