Double Standards
President Trump drew the ire of CBS Evening News and White House correspondent Weijia Jiang on Monday for daring to keep American spirits up, and letting them know there was “light at the end of the tunnel.” Citing unnamed “experts,” Jiang decried Trump’s optimism by claiming the country wasn’t even in the tunnel yet.
As the coronavirus pandemic has worsened, CNN has emphasized bleak outcomes, Trump hatefests, and venomous, tiresome Fox News-bashing the cornerstones of their coverage instead of first informing viewers and providing hope. However, one thing that these charlatans have shied away from is their own culpability, including their downplaying of the virus, barely covering it (in favor of impeachment), and even holding its March 5 upfront event (dubbed the CNN Experience) with hundreds in attendance plus an overflow room.
Two New York Times stories on Monday took two entirely different angles on how the ideologies of the American left and right are faring in the era of the coronavirus. It’s clear which one the Times thinks has failed, from the front-page headline over Jim Rutenberg’s story: “Virus Battle Shreds the Right’s Political Playbook.” The text box: “Disdain for ‘Socialism’ Collides With Crisis,” including scare quotes, as if socialism isn’t now being pushed by the Democratic Party. Rutenberg’s piece was suffused with an undertone of gloating.
If you somehow combined history’s most evil, genocidal maniacs into one super-baddie, according to comedian Larry David, that wicked incarnation would still have more redeeming qualities than President Trump. During an interview with The New York Times, the creator of “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” told the outlet about his time in coronavirus quarantine, expressed his noxious opinion of the current president and made an effusive plug for Hillary Clinton’s new Hulu documentary.
The Washington Post sure misses irony, well unless their latest fawning book review is a big joke, because they touted the new memoir of anti-semitic activist Linda Sarsour as a fearless work aimed a destroying the “normalization of hate.” Really, Linda Sarsour? The Israel-hating, Hamas-fraternizing defender of Sharia law who was removed from far-left orgs like the Women’s March because she was a liability for their image? You’ve got to be joking.
In an on-air response to an article attacking him and the network, Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson flipped the tables on The New York Times Thursday night when he called out the liberal paper for “screwing up coronavirus stories from day one.” And he also rubbed their nose in their ridiculous China and virus articles dating back to January.
Don’t be fooled. Though Ellen Degeneres may be the pleasant, smiling face of popular daytime talk show Ellen, some of the people calling the shots behind the scenes aren’t quite as jovial and happy-go-lucky as their brand pays them to appear. Though he tries to toe the well-adjusted, normal guy line for the sake of his career, Ellen executive producer Andy Lassner turns into a quaking, rage-filled troll every time President Trump tweets.
Liberal media talking heads on Twitter continue to spew garbage at MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell for being invited by President Donald Trump to speak at a coronavirus task force briefing. Conservative Fox News host Greg Gutfeld went nuclear and unleashed on the liberal media on Twitter. “[W]hen people do great things to help others, the media mocks their religion,” Gutfeld tweeted March 30. “[I]magine, if it were the reverse: [S]omeone did EVIL things, and then you mentioned their religious extremism. The media would be calling you a bigot. [S]crew these hypocritical assholes.”
On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough says, regarding the coronavirus, that "everybody saw this coming in early January." Yet on Scarborough's own Morning Joe, on March 10th, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio repeatedly downplayed the threat of the virus. On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough, criticizing President Trump, said:
It’s been nearly a week since a former Joe Biden staffer leveled disturbing accusations of sexual misconduct against the Democratic presidential frontrunner, and yet ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and CNN haven’t said a single word about them. In that same time period, CNN, MSNBC and NBC have hosted Biden for a total of three interviews (including an hour-long town hall on CNN), and no host asked even a single question about these new charges.
The front page of Sunday’s New York Times used the coronavirus crisis to hypocritically accuse the right of spreading life-threatening disinformation about White House coronavirus expert Dr. Anthony Fauci: “Chief Scientist Draws Venom From the Right.” Reporters Davey Alba and Sheera Frenkel actually performed an analytical study of a sparsely populated universe of tweets to conjure up a supposedly newsworthy story. Oddly enough, the Times itself has questioned the credibility of coronavirus expert Dr. Deborah Birx, after she dared to express guarded optimism about the virus. To suggest Birx is a Trump stooge is newsworthy, but to call Fauci a Hillary Clinton stooge demands a front-page Times investigation.
New York Times fact-checker Linda Qiu targeted President Trump’s coronavirus response, with statistical sleight of hand, and managed to criticize Trump both for what he does and for not doing it quickly enough: “Analyzing the Patterns in Trump’s Falsehoods About Coronavirus.” After the paper criticizing Trump for the restrictions, Qiu then criticized him for skepticism of those restrictions. Meanwhile, the paper has almost ignored gross failures in their own besieged backyard: The dithering response by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.