NY Times: Trump, GOP Exploiting Virus to ‘Assault,' 'Stonewall’ Democrats

March 22nd, 2020 2:25 PM

The New York Times is using the coronavirus crisis to push its preferred ideology -- while having the nerve to blame Trump and conservatives for doing so -- in “Under the Virus’s Cloak, Trump Pursues Long-Sought Policies,” by Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Annie Karni. There's more editorializing than reporting going on. 

The White House, under the guise of its coronavirus response, is quietly advancing policies that President Trump has long advocated, from tougher border controls to an assault on organized labor to the stonewalling of congressional oversight.

And across the government, departments have been citing the “whole of government” response to the pandemic as they push through the same policies they sought before the crisis. Just this week during a coronavirus briefing, Mr. Trump said his administration would use authority granted to the surgeon general to immediately turn away those who crossed the border illegally.

....

Administration officials insist that such long-sought policies are necessary to stem the outbreak. But opportunism is clearly in play.

News that the “coronavirus task force” will not testify before Congress brought this sour accusation:

But the halt, Democrats said, appeared to be in line with the stonewalling the administration has engaged in since the Mueller investigation and the impeachment process....

There was a mild paragraph noting Democrats are also using the issue. (So is math-challenged editorial-board member Mara Gay, with her "no bail for criminals" agenda).

The White House has belatedly provided support to state governments after weeks of criticism that the full capacity of the federal government had not been used to quell the pandemic. But one of Mr. Trump’s earliest steps to contain the spread of the virus was to revert to one of his favorite topics: border security.

Which the rest of the world has “belatedly” reverted to as well. 

To push amnesty, the Times is being as short-sighted and anti-science as it accuses Trump of being, hinting that since the coronavirus rate in Mexico is (currently) low, why bar migrants?

While there were 118 confirmed cases of the virus in Mexico as of Thursday evening compared with more than 13,000 in the United States and more than 800 in Canada....

The paper devoted a full story to lamenting Trump is using the crisis "as a pretext" to turn back refugees even though the case numbers in those countries are (temporarily) lower. (So maybe we’re doing the migrants a favor by not exposing them to coronavirus-ridden America?)

The Times even whined that Mexico’s president was accommodating that wicked U.S. policy.

Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has taken heat for bending to the will of the United States in ways once unthinkable for a leftist leader, especially one who had vowed to protect migrant rights.

His public assent has helped push shelters beyond capacity, taxed local and state governments, exhausted the resources of charitable groups and strained the good will of residents.

Just like the influx of migrants does to shelters and governments in the United States. Except the Times covers that as an American human-rights abuse.