Fox News’ absurd response to Biden’s coronavirus speech explains

Fox News has responded to President Joe Biden’s first announcement that all U.S. adults would be eligible for a coronavirus vaccine by May 1, and the country’s goal is to return to normal on July 4 by to insist that former President Donald Trump deserves the honor. But the allegation cannot withstand the investigation.

While Trump’s Operation Warp Speed ​​program provides incentives for private companies to accelerate vaccine development and has directly helped Moderna develop an effective vaccine, it is not necessarily the case that vaccines would not be available today if they were not for Trump. was not. The first FDA-approved coronavirus vaccine was developed by Pfizer last year without any direct assistance from the federal government.

To be clear – Trump deserves credit for the fact that multiple vaccines have been developed so quickly. As my colleague Dylan Scott reported last October, the federal government’s billion-dollar investment in helping companies like Moderna and Johnson & Johnson develop vaccines has undoubtedly helped the country reach a point where there is finally light at the end of the tunnel is. Biden acknowledged this and said in December that ‘I think the [Trump] administration deserves some credit for getting it [vaccine effort] from the ground, Operation Warp Speed. ”

But vaccines do not do much good if there is no plan to get them in their arms, and that is where Trump really fell short. As was the case when the US struggled to build the coronavirus testing infrastructure in the early days of the pandemic, the Trump administration’s plan to distribute vaccines did nothing but land countries that did not have enough resources. , too late. Trump’s failure to plan the “last mile” led to deliveries in which unused vaccines were thrown out in the weeks before Biden took office.

While it goes too far to say Trump deserves no credit, the criticism with which Biden opened his first speech is entirely fair.

‘A year ago we were hit with a virus that went silent and spread unnoticed. Denials for days, weeks, then months, ”he said, referring to Trump’s attempt to eradicate the coronavirus before and during his failed re-election campaign. “It led to more deaths, more infections, more stress and more loneliness.”

Biden moved on and the rest of the way barely referred to the former president. But he’s already provided something to Fox News to go crazy about.

“He kicks them in the groin”

It’s hard to turn down a pandemic response that has left more than half a million dead Americans successful, but during a battle over Biden’s speech on Friday morning, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade tries.

‘We do not have to exceed the 500,000 dead; we had that moment, ”he said. ‘Let’s talk about the future ahead. Every time he gets the chance to praise the previous government, he does not just kick them in the groin. ”

Kilmeade’s proposal that Biden shot cheaply by criticizing Trump’s coronavirus response reflects what host Sean Hannity said in his program shortly after the speech.

“Joe Biden – he needs to pick up the phone, I suggest, call Mar-a-Lago, and yes, bring unity into the country, as he says he so desperately wants, and thank President Donald Trump,” he said. He later added: ‘No Trump, no vaccine, Joe. Stop getting honored for something, honestly, you had nothing to do with it. ”

It is true that about 1 million vaccines are administered every day when Trump leaves office. But Biden nearly tripled the rate in less than two months.

Hannity’s statement that Biden “has nothing to do with it” with the progress of the US vaccination effort is therefore false. Biden oversaw the federal government buying hundreds of millions of vaccine doses, enabling the aggressive timeline he outlined Thursday. And his government oversaw the development and implementation of vaccine distribution plans that rely more than just on the states.

But Fox News’ turn is not just impenetrable to reality; it is also impervious to shame. A panel discussion on Hannity with former Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus and former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany is behind Biden because he was too prepared – proving that Fox is willing to attack Biden if he says anything: ” “Thank you, Mr. Trump. You deserve all the credit.”

In the same vein, while Hannity Biden hammered at night for slight verbal gaffs, he claims that this is evidence of a kind of cognitive impairment, chyron on his Thursday show, Biden dismissed because he simply “survived[ing]” ‘A’ short, written speech. ‘Damn if he does, damn if he does not.

It becomes even more absurd

Kilmeade and Hannity’s outrageous twist was nothing compared to comments from Fox News presenter Mark Levin, who went so awkwardly on Hannity’s show that you had to wonder if he did not watch the same speech.

“This speech that Joe Biden gave is the most disgusting, propagandistic speech that a demagogue, even a politician, has ever given,” Levin said. “It’s pathetic.”

Even the fact that Biden says the country is on course to keep small gatherings of Fourth of July safe was somehow so badly spun by Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, who both complained that Biden was acting like a tyrant by telling them what to do.

“How dare you tell us who we can spend the fourth of July with?” Carlson said.

“And then the day of Independence Day is the day he says he can allow people to come together, just as un-American,” said Fox co-star Mollie Hemingway in Ingraham’s program. “Joe Biden can not tell me when I can braai in my backyard.”

As ridiculous as it may seem, these are serious things for most of the roughly 2.5 million people looking for Fox News’ primetime shows, which still remain the top qualifiers in cable news, even without Trump in the White House.

Then, on Friday morning, Hannity’s fake and misleading fight over how Biden should call Trump and thank him covered as if it were news by one of the network’s news programs, which illustrates one of the ways in which Fox regularly included its opinion piece in the news cycle.

Fox News struggles with President Biden

Trump inherited the longest number of job growth from former president. Barack Obama when he took office, but still described the state of affairs he inherited, even in the earliest days of his government, as a mess. Fox did little to push the turn back. The idea that Biden has some moral obligation to give Trump credit for anything is hypocritical at best.

But in its fight for a popular president who has just signed a very popular $ 1.9 billion Covid bill, Fox News normalizes the absurd by, for example, trying to turn everyday life into major scandals and linking Biden to culture war issues. .

And these are not just the first hosts. Chris Wallace equated Biden on Friday afternoon with the fact that he fairly criticized Trump’s Covid response to Trump’s treatment of Obama, saying Biden was “as gracious to his predecessor as Donald Trump to his predecessor.”

Donald Trump, you may remember, gained political prestige in 2011 by spreading racist conspiracy theories that Obama is not really American. Wallace’s remark is therefore about as false as false equivalents can be.

It’s tempting to vote it out, especially given the diminished relevance of Fox News following Trump’s departure from the White House. But as Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) showed Friday, elite Republicans share the same skewed worldview as Hannity.

“Thank God for the genius of the Trump administration,” Scott said in a Fox News interview in response to Biden’s speech.

Scott’s claim will certainly please Trump, who has released a tweety version statement said earlier this week: “I hope everyone remembers when they get the Covid-19 vaccine (often called China virus) that if I were not president, you would not get such a ‘shot’ for 5 years “, at best, and probably will not get it at all. I hope everyone remembers!”

But Scott’s praise of Trump rests on false premises. He claimed that, thanks to Trump, “300 million doses were ready to be put into arms” on the first day of Biden’s presidency. But it is not true.

According to a recent fact-checking by Kaiser Health News, Trump had contracts for enough vaccine to vaccinate 200 million Americans when he left office, but those are not the same as’ doses ready to go into arms. ‘ Aside from vaccinating health workers and people in relief facilities, Trump’s plan to get them into his arms has done little more than offer thoughts and prayers to the states.

However, it is not surprising that the host of the “news side”, which Scott spoke, offers no setback.