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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! Im Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzlez.

JUAN GONZLEZ: We turn now to look at how healthcare workers are being put at risk as the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread. The number of cases in the U.S. passed 1,000 Tuesday, with the rate of infections likely increasing. Thirty-two people in the country have died. Despite this, the U.S. continues to lag on testing, and healthcare workers say they lack adequate protection and protocols to allow them to safely care for infected patients. They also say the countrys hospitals are woefully unprepared to handle the crisis. Nurses in the hot zones of California and Washington had already reported having to beg for face masks and decried a systemic lack of guidance on how to address the virus. But Tuesday, National Nurses United said the Centers for Disease Control actually weakened its guidelines on responding to the pandemic.

AMY GOODMAN: In response, nurses with the National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee are holding a national day of action today to demand better protections for healthcare workers and the public. This all comes as coronavirus has also rallied nurses around the fight for Medicare for All. On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence spoke about health insurance for people who contract coronavirus.

VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: Today, President Trump assembled a top health insurance executives in America. And as we announced earlier today, all of our major health insurance companies have now joined with Medicare and Medicaid and agreed to waive all copays, cover the cost of all treatment for those who contract the coronavirus. They have committed to no surprise billing. And theyve committed to encourage telemedicine.

AMY GOODMAN: Bonnie Castillo, executive director of National Nurses United, tweeted earlier this week, #COVID19 lays bare truths #nurses know all too well: our health care system is cruel, inhumane, & inefficient. It is our duty to protect public health. We MUST rise to the challenge. Any vaccine or treatment developed with taxpayer dollars must be provided free of charge.

Well, for more, we go to Minneapolis, where were joined by National Nurses United President Jean Ross. Still with us, The Intercept's Naomi Klein and Alicia Garza, who's with National Domestic Workers Alliance.

Jean Ross, thank you for joining us. Talk about todays day of action, what youre calling for, and where Medicare for All fits into this story in this time of coronavirus.

JEAN ROSS: Well, basically, were calling for protections for registered nurses and other healthcare workers, who are the people that are going to be caring for the COVID-19-affected patients. Right now we did a survey at the end of February, and what we found was only 29% of our nurses and other nurses that were surveyed said that there was a plan in place to deal with any of these patients. Twenty-two percent said they didnt even know if there was a plan. We had only 63% that said they had enough N95 respirators. Twenty-three percent said they had what we call PAPRs, powered air purifying respirators. Only 30% said they could come up with enough what we call PPE, personal protective equipment, should there be a surge in COVID-19 patients. And some said they just plain didnt know. And we have been calling for this protection for healthcare workers, not just for many months now, but also, if you recall, since the Ebola crisis hit our shores. And sad to say, we are still very lacking.

JUAN GONZLEZ: Could you talk about the most vulnerable communities, including undocumented immigrants and those with no health insurance whatsoever, what prevents them then to go to a hospital to seek care even if they get sick?

JEAN ROSS: Well, if we had a national healthcare system, like some other countries do, we would be in a far better position. For example, if you look at a country like Canada, who had to undergo the SARS crisis, and they were able to do it in large part because of that system. We have such a patchwork here thats dependent on profit. Then our homeless communities, our immigrants, that you mentioned, those of lower economic status are going to be the ones hardest hit. Theyre going to not want to come in, because they dont have the money to pay. They may or may not have heard about what the vice president just said. But that still is insurance companies, for-profit companies, deciding what theyll do, and not our government, our society, deciding what well do for people who need care.

AMY GOODMAN: Exit polls in every state voting Super Tuesday 2 showed strong support for Medicare for All, including in Mississippi, where it has the backing of nearly two-thirds of Democratic voters. But speaking on MSNBC Monday, Joe Biden indicated, if elected president, he would veto Medicare for All legislation should Congress send it to his desk. This is what he said.

LAWRENCE ODONNELL: Youre president. Bernie Sanders is still active in the Senate. He manages to get Medicare for All through the Senate in some compromised version, the Elizabeth Warren version or other version. Nancy Pelosi gets a version of it through the House of Representatives. It comes to your desk. Do you veto it?

JOE BIDEN: I would veto anything that delays providing the security and the certainty of healthcare being available now. If they got that through, and by some miracle, and there was an epiphany that occurred, and some miracle occurred that said, OK, its passed, then youve got to look at the cost. I want to know: How did they find the $35 trillion? What is that doing? Is it going to significantly raise taxes on the middle class? Which it will. Whats going to happen? Look, my opposition isnt to the principle that there should be you should have Medicare. I mean, if everybody healthcare should be a right in America. My opposition relates to whether or not, A, its doable, two, what the cost is, and what the consequences for the rest of the budget are.

AMY GOODMAN: Thats Joe Biden. Jean Ross, president of National Nurses United, lets get your response, then Alicia Garza and Naomi Klein.

JEAN ROSS: Well, first of all, its not that healthcare should be a human right. It just plain is. And we see now that the American people agree with us. As far as cost, I believe he knows exactly what its costing now, and we cant afford what we are doing. So, any costs that would be incurred with putting it in place would be far outweighed by the savings that we would have afterward. Im afraid that until we keep insisting that those for-profit insurance companies are part of a system, we will never achieve what we need to guarantee care for everyone as a human right.

AMY GOODMAN: Lets go to Alicia Garza, who, among the hats she wears, is with the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Alicia?

ALICIA GARZA: I mean, if nothing else, we can see here that Joe Biden is not Obama. And frankly, I would agree that whats at stake here are millions of workers, many of whom are immigrant workers and workers of color and women and people who are trying to put food on their tables while also caring for other people, and doing so in the midst, as I said earlier, of a global pandemic. I work with domestic workers, who are people who work inside of peoples homes. For us, a home is a workplace. And frankly, domestic workers are locked out of most federal labor protections that should protect all workers, that would give workers sick days and paid time off. And were seeing that in the midst of this pandemic, the real kind of underpinnings of the abuses that workers are facing in this economy are coming to broad daylight. Domestic workers already dont have access to paid time off, paid sick days, etc., and are caring for some of the most vulnerable people in our society and helping to make families make ends meet.

And so, one of the things that were really concerned about is making sure that, at the very least, that there is an expansion of access to the things that people need, particularly in this type of crisis, but in general and overall. People need access to affordable and quality healthcare. And in this very moment, people also need to be able to take time off, take care of their families and take sick days, or else this global pandemic will continue to spread. And under this current administration, I dont think theres any reason for us to think that theyve got it under control. In fact, that could have happened months ago, and now we are in a situation where, as we understand it, containment is not possible. So, what we can do in this moment is make sure, particularly, that the people who are caring for folk who have been affected by this crisis, including nurses, including domestic workers, are well taken care of in this moment. And a way to do that is to make sure that protections are strong. And another way to do that is to make sure that were holding this administration accountable for keeping insurance companies in check, and that were holding

JUAN GONZLEZ: Alicia, if I could just cut you off a second, because we just have about 30 seconds. We want to get Naomi to get her final words in on this.

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, look, I agree completely. This administration is uniquely ill-equipped to deal with this crisis, because they are not treating it as a health crisis. Theyre treating it as a PR crisis. Theyve shown again and again that they when they dont like reality, they just try to bury it, I mean, in the same way that they dont want to talk about what our satellites are measuring in terms of climate change, in the same that they suppress the number of people who died after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Now they think that by not testing, this crisis is going to go away. And we need leadership that actually is guided by objective reality and science, and puts people first.

AMY GOODMAN: Were going to have to leave it there, but of course we continue with you. Tomorrow were going to focus on the issue of paid sick leave and so much more, bringing you updates from New Rochelle, the epicenter in the country, and other places around the world. Naomi Klein, senior correspondent at The Intercept, inaugural Gloria Steinem chair of media, culture and feminist studies at Rutgers University; Alicia Garza with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Black Futures Lab, Black Lives Matter Global Network; and Jean Ross, president of National Nurses United, speaking to us from Minneapolis. That does it for our show. Im Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzlez. Thanks so much for joining us, and be safe.

Read more here:
Nurses on the Frontlines of Coronavirus Pandemic Demand More Protection & Medicare for All - Democracy Now!

WASHINGTON The White House moved on Thursday to tighten control of coronavirus messaging by government health officials and scientists, directing them to coordinate all statements and public appearances with the office of Vice President Mike Pence, according to several officials familiar with the new approach.

But on a day that the White House sought to display a more disciplined strategy to the administrations communications about the virus, Mr. Trump used an evening event honoring African-American History Month to rail against the news media, claiming it is overstating the threat, and to congratulate himself for keeping the number of cases low.

I think its an incredible achievement what our countrys done, Mr. Trump said, noting that he had moved quickly to ban travel from China after the emergence of the virus. Even though a total of 60 people infected with the coronavirus are in the United States, he ignored all but the 15 who did not initially contract it overseas.

Fifteen people is almost, I would say, a miracle, the president bragged.

The comments came just a few hours after Mr. Pence convened a meeting of the coronavirus task force composed of some of the nations top public health officials. The vice president made it clear that they would report to him.

Im leading the task force, Mr. Pence told reporters at the Department of Health and Human Services, even as he promised to rely on the guidance of experts.

Mr. Trump announced Wednesday evening that Mr. Pence would coordinate the governments response to the public health threat while playing down the immediate danger from the virus that is spreading rapidly across the globe.

Officials insist Mr. Pences goal is not to control what experts and other officials say, but to make sure their efforts are coordinated, after days of confusion with various administration officials making contradictory statements on television.

But the attempt to demonstrate a unified administration voice was undercut early in the day, when Mr. Pence said that he had selected Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the director of the United States effort to combat H.I.V. and AIDS, to serve as the coronavirus response coordinator for the White House, enlisting an experienced scientist and physician to address the potential spread of the virus.

The announcements of the roles of the vice president and Dr. Birx were intended to show that Mr. Trump and those around him are taking seriously the potential threat to the health of Americans. Aides said the president wanted governors and members of Congress to have a single point person to communicate with, eliminating any jockeying for power in a decentralized situation.

Updated Feb. 29, 2020

But Dr. Birx is now the third person to have been designated as the administrations primary coronavirus official, along with Mr. Pence and Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services.

Mr. Trump said Wednesday that Mike is going to be in charge, and Mike will report back to me. Mr. Pence said it would be Dr. Birx. Mr. Azar, for his part, remains the chairman of the governments coronavirus task force.

The vice presidents move to control the messaging about coronavirus appeared to be aimed at preventing the kind of conflicting statements that have plagued the administrations response.

The latest instance occurred Thursday evening, when the president said that the virus could get worse or better in the days and weeks ahead, but that nobody knows, contradicting Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, one of the countrys leading experts on viruses and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.

At the meeting with Mr. Pence on Thursday, Dr. Fauci described the seriousness of the public health threat facing Americans, saying that this virus has adapted extremely well to human species and noting that it appeared to have a higher mortality rate than influenza.

We are dealing with a serious virus, Dr. Fauci said.

Dr. Fauci has told associates that the White House had instructed him not to say anything else without clearance.

The new White House approach came as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged Thursday that a California woman with coronavirus was made to wait days before she was tested for an infection because of the agencys restrictive criteria.

And despite Mr. Trumps efforts to calm jittery investors, stock markets plunged again Thursday. The S&P 500 fell 4.4 percent, the worst single-day slide for the market since August 2011 and leaving it 10 percent lower than it was a week earlier.

The presidents decision to appoint Mr. Pence to lead the coronavirus response came after several days in which his aides grappled with whether to name a coronavirus czar.

Mr. Trump said on Wednesday that he was pleased with Mr. Azars performance, calling the team that he has led totally brilliant. But White House aides, led by Mick Mulvaney, the presidents acting chief of staff, had debated for days whether the administration needed a point person to be the face of the response.

The decision to put Mr. Pence in charge was made on Wednesday after the president told some people that the vice president did not have anything else to do, according to people familiar with Mr. Trumps comments.

Dr. Birx has spent more than three decades working on H.I.V./AIDS immunology, vaccine research and global health, according to the White House, which said in a statement that she would bring her infectious disease, immunologic, vaccine research and interagency coordinating capacity to this position.

The presidents selection of Mr. Pence and the decision to name Dr. Birx as the coordinator for the response further erodes Mr. Azars traditional role as the nations top health official in charge of directing the governments response to a medical crisis. Mr. Trump has told people that he considers Mr. Azar to be too alarmist about the virus.

Mr. Azar denied reports that he had not been consulted about the decision to bring in Mr. Pence before the presidents announcement Wednesday evening. He told lawmakers on Thursday during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing that when he was informed of Mr. Pences selection, I said, quote, thats genius.

Officials also announced that Mr. Pence was expanding the coronavirus task force to include key administration officials, including Dr. Jerome M. Adams, the surgeon general, as well as the presidents top two economic advisers, Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary. The task force is made up of more than a dozen top administration officials and cabinet secretaries.

An administration official said Thursday night that Mr. Pence had discussed the coronavirus with several governors, including Andrew Cuomo, Democrat of New York; Greg Abbott, Republican of Texas; Larry Hogan, Republican of Maryland; Pete Ricketts, Republican of Nebraska; Jay Inslee, Democrat of Washington; and Gavin Newsom, Democrat of California.

The decision to bring in Mr. Pence was not without controversy.

Critics of the vice president pointed to Mr. Pences record on public health when he was the governor of Indiana as evidence that he was not the right person to lead the governments response to a health crisis. Democrats noted that Mr. Pence was blamed for aggravating a severe AIDS outbreak among intravenous drug users when he opposed calls for a clean needle exchange program on the grounds it would encourage more drug use.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters that she had told Mr. Pence directly that she questioned his new role given that as governor, he had slashed the public health budget in Indiana.

I spoke with the vice president this morning, made some of these concerns known to him, she said. We have always had a very candid relationship and I expressed to him the concern that I had of his being in this position.

Annie Karni and Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.

Originally posted here:
Pence Will Control All Coronavirus Messaging From Health Officials - The New York Times

Administration officials held a briefing at the White House featuring Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, along with Russell T. Vought, the budget director, and Eric Ueland, the White House legislative director. After each official read off a series of prepared talking points, they took only a handful of questions from journalists.

Of the three officials, Mr. Azar went the furthest in suggesting that the United States might face a difficult next phase of the coronavirus, if it spreads. Mr. Trump has repeatedly told advisers he is concerned that Mr. Azar and others in the administration are presenting an alarmist view.

The administration has ignored or sidelined expert staff at agencies like the C.D.C. and the N.I.H., offered the public inconsistent and confusing information, and failed to provide clear leadership, said Dr. Kathleen Rest, the executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists and a health policy expert, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

Mr. Pence went to Florida on Friday for a previously scheduled fund-raiser for the states Republican delegation, although he planned to give a briefing to Gov. Ron DeSantis while there. He also stopped by the radio broadcaster Rush Limbaughs studio to insist that the administration was not focused on politics.

Washington is always going to have a political reflexive response to things, Mr. Pence said. But were going to tune that out.

Mr. Limbaugh has been among the conservative commentators who have blamed the news media and political opponents for overemphasizing the coronavirus, which he compared to the common cold. It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump, Mr. Limbaugh, who was recently given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Mr. Trump, said on his show on Monday.

That theme has been amplified by some of the presidents favorite Fox News hosts, like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, in recent days and animated Mr. Mulvaneys appearance on Friday at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Md.

Read more from the original source:
Trump Accuses Media and Democrats of Exaggerating Coronavirus Threat - The New York Times

A good portion of the airspace over central Japan has been reserved for the exclusive use of the U.S. military since the end of World War II, a fact that isnt widely known in Japan. Over the past several weeks, however, it has become a sudden reality to thousands of Tokyoites and residents of Kawasaki who live below new low-altitude flight paths that bring commercial aircraft in and out of Haneda Airport.

As the Asahi Shimbun outlined in a January 26 article, domestic authorities have been seeking U.S. cooperation to allow joint civilian-military use of the Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo in order to handle the expected increase in international visitors, even if it was only during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics. The U.S. military, which controls Yokota, refused to even negotiate the issue, even though they allow Japans Self-Defense Forces to share the base. However, they did finally budge on the matter of the so-called Yokota airspace, which extends from the Izu Peninsula on the Pacific Ocean to Niigata Prefecture on the Japan Sea, allowing commercial flights to use special routes that go through a small portion of this airspace in order to access Haneda, but only for three hours a day. The government was relieved, but others are upset because those routes go directly over their homes.

The transport ministry said the new flights were a test that ostensibly ended a few weeks ago, but it appears they were always going to be fully implemented starting at the end of March, and there was already an earnest movement protesting the plan before the tests started. According to a Feb. 10 report in the Mainichi Shimbun, a symposium was held last December in Tokyos Shinagawa Ward, where residents expressed their fear of noise pollution and falling objects. Two of the speakers at the symposium were Kiwami Omura, a representative of a citizens group that opposes the new routes, and former Japan Airlines pilot Hiroshi Sugie, who discussed, from a technical standpoint, how dangerous the plan is.

Both men held a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan on Feb. 13 in a bid to share their misgiving about the plan with an international audience. Omura pointed out that the worldwide trend is to move airports as far from urban centers as conveniently possible, but Japan has done the opposite. Although Tokyo has a dedicated international airport in Narita, Chiba Prefecture, its considered too far away, and so for years the government has been working to move much of Naritas international capacity to Haneda, which was previously Tokyos dedicated domestic airport.

Sugie described the technical problems of landing airplanes at Haneda when approaches are made using the new flight routes, which demand a steeper angle of descent that is more difficult to pull off. One reason the transport ministry gave for the steep descent is the noise issue. A more shallow descent would probably mean a longer period of low altitude flying over larger swaths of the city.

Omura professed an inability to understand any justification for the new routes. According to the transport ministrys master plan, it wants to increase the number of Haneda flights by 39,000 a year, 11,000 of which would use the new routes depending on wind direction at the time of approach or departure, which isnt a big number. Omura doesnt see why the number of flights cant be increased using only the old flight paths, which are over the sea or unpopulated areas, especially since some airlines dont like the new routes.

Many of Omuras and Sugies points were made in the Feb. 10 Mainichi article, which also looked into the Yokota airspace issue, since any commercial aircraft that flies through it has to contend with the U.S. Air Forces flight control apparatus that mandates a certain perpendicular approach for commercial flights. The government is compromising the safety of both commercial aircraft and local residents for the sake of its security alliance with the United States. A different Mainichi article that also appeared Feb. 10 mirrored Omuras questioning of any need for the new routes: Adding 10 flights an hour at most isnt enough of a reason to justify forcing them to fly over the city, regardless of wind direction. The government has been trying for so long to reclaim some of the Yokota airspace that now that they have access to even a small bit of it they may feel they have to use it or lose it.

According to the aforementioned Asahi Shimbun article, the U.S. military demonstrates little concern for the Japanese people or their safety as shown by their use of the heliport at Hardy Barracks in the Roppongi area of Tokyo, which necessitates low-altitude helicopter flights that are normally not allowed in cities under Japans Civil Aeronautics Law. This disregard for Japanese sovereignty extends to much of the U.S. military presence, and not just in Okinawa, where it receives the most attention. On Feb. 14, Tokyo Shimbun editor Shigeru Handa, who has written extensively about security matters, appeared on the web program Democracy Times to talk about the U.S.-manufactured tilt-rotor military aircraft known as the Osprey, which has a higher-than-average accident rate. Handa says that the U.S. has five Ospreys at Yokota Air Base that practice low-altitude flights at night in an SDF zone covering five nearby prefectures, but while the SDF rarely performs drills over populated areas, the U.S. military does. In fact, Ospreys fly anywhere in Japan for training purposes and the Japanese government never objects. Whats more, U.S. military aircraft can freely use some regular commercialairports almost whenever they want.

Handa claims most major media never talk about this, so the public has little context with which to understand these new flight paths over Tokyo. They may think the skies over Japan are free, but they arent. They arent even Japanese.

Read the rest here:
Who really controls the airspace over central Japan? - The Japan Times

The stock market is swooning. Consumers are stockpiling masks and antibacterial gels. President Trumps response to a global epidemic has done little to quell fears.

In the right-wing media universe, however, the commotion over the coronavirus is hardly a crisis for the White House. Instead, its just another biased attack on a president from the usual haters.

It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host, said on his syndicated program this week, dismissing the disease as a Democratic talking point.

The coronavirus is the common cold, folks, Mr. Limbaugh added, incorrectly. (The coronavirus is more deadly and more contagious than the common cold, and it can cause severe flulike symptoms.)

Viewers of the Fox News talk show Fox & Friends on Friday heard the co-host Ainsley Earhardt introduce a segment by announcing: Lets talk about the Democrats and the media with this coronavirus, and theyre making it political.

Her guest was Pete Hegseth, a Fox & Friends Weekend co-host and an on-air Trump cheerleader who doubles as an informal confidant of the president.

I dont want to say this, I dont relish the reality, Mr. Hegseth began. But you start to feel, you really do watch the Democrats, watch the media that theyre rooting for coronavirus to spread. Theyre rooting for it to grow. Theyre rooting for the problem to get worse.

Ms. Earhardt and her co-hosts, Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade, nodded along. Their show is the highest-rated morning program on cable news.

The losses in the stock market one of the presidents self-appointed barometers of the nations success are described as a consequence of fears deliberately spread by liberals and biased journalists, rather than a reaction by investors concerned about how the virus has affected economies around the world.

The coronavirus, from this standpoint, is compared to impeachment and the special counsels report, major news events dismissed by Trump allies as hyped-up nonevents.

That view was validated on Friday by one of the federal governments highest-ranking officials: Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff. He told conservative activists that the media focus on the coronavirus was an effort to hurt Mr. Trump.

The reason youre seeing so much attention to it today is that they think this is going to be the thing that brings down the president, Mr. Mulvaney said in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington. Thats what this is all about.

There is little doubt that a global health crisis suits the relentless churn of 24-hour cable news networks, no matter the ideology of their commentators. Every major news channel has devoted hundreds of hours to examining the contagion.

Inevitably, the demand for disease news can elevate pundits with relatively little expertise. Helen Branswell, who writes about global health for STAT, a health news website based in Boston, said she had heard from many unqualified people hoping to be quoted on the coronavirus.

My inbox is flooded with people trying to get me to interview people who are being passed out as experts, who really are not experts, she said.

In addition, the coverage, presented with the signature flash of cable news, has at times amplified misleading or downright false narratives about the spread of the virus.

Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, for instance, floated the possibility in a Fox News interview that the coronavirus had originated at a Chinese laboratory, a theory that scientists say lacks any evidence.

Jon Cohen, who is among the team of reporters covering the coronavirus for the magazine Science, said anyone exaggerating the likelihood that the virus had been created in a laboratory could leave viewers misinformed.

It reinforces biases people have against China, against government, against scientific research, Mr. Cohen said.

Mr. Limbaugh, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Mr. Trump this month, used his radio program this week to link the virus with the Democratic presidential front-runner, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Just keep in mind where the coronavirus came from, Mr. Limbaugh told listeners. It came from a country that Bernie Sanders wants to turn the United States into a mirror image of: Communist China. (At a CNN town hall on Monday, Mr. Sanders, who identifies as a democratic socialist, described China as an authoritarian country, becoming more and more authoritarian, adding that it had taken more people out of extreme poverty" than any other nation.)

Mr. Limbaugh also advanced a baseless claim that the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, was biased against the president because her brother is Rod Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general who was a target of Mr. Trumps attacks.

Allies of the Trump administration often take a warlike stance toward any issue that poses a threat to the presidents reputation, adopting the language of victimhood and grievance.

Sean Hannity, at the top of his Fox News program on Thursday, attributed the worries over the coronavirus to a fear campaign led by the media mob and the Democratic extreme radical socialist party.

Theyre now sadly politicizing and actually weaponizing an infectious disease, in what is basically just the latest effort to bludgeon President Trump, Mr. Hannity declared. Many on the left are now all rooting for corona to wreak havoc in the United States. Why? To score cheap, repulsive political points. (Mr. Hannity averages more than three million viewers a night, the biggest audience on cable news.)

One Hannity guest had the temerity to dissent sort of. Geraldo Rivera, a Fox News regular, agreed with Mr. Hannitys contention that Democrats had sought to arouse fear. But he told Mr. Hannity that our friend, President Trump, had not handled the situation ideally.

The president was too cool for school, Mr. Rivera said. I think it would have been better if he were more energetic, more pointed and forceful

Before he could finish his thought, he was interrupted by Mr. Hannity and another guest, the Trump loyalist Dan Bongino, who quickly rebuked his colleague.

Thats a horrible analysis, Geraldo, Mr. Bongino said.

See the article here:
Right-Wing Media Says Virus Fears Were Whipped Up to Hurt Trump - The New York Times