There sure was deliberate stupidity at the Thursday news briefing at which President Donald J. Trump seemed to endorse bombarding human bodies with ultraviolet light and possibly injecting household detergents into the human body to fight the COVID-19 virus.
He did not actually say that, although you could see Dr. Deborah Birx biting the inside of her cheek and strangling her hands because she knew what it sounded like. It sounded very much like an endorsement, like his previous love affair with hydroxychloroquine as a cure for the virus.
After four years of covering the man, the media scrub knows what he’s like. Instead of understanding that he habitually freelances and runs his mouth and thinks out loud, they went out of context and reacted as if he had endorsed cannibalism.
You can say he handed them a “gotcha” moment and they ran with it, and that would be true. But I am saying they could show more sense and savvy than that. Instead, most of the Big Names have their sharpened hatchets out. It’s like when Trump said “hundreds of governors” are calling him. You just sigh or leave it for the editorial cartoonists. You don’t have to have a conniption, which is the usual reaction of most mass news outlets.
The worst offenders are CNN and MSNBC, which cover the “story” on every one of their news shows, so it is endlessly repeated and creates its own gravity. Newspapers run it once and it’s down, but cable won’t give it a decent funeral.
Let me give you another example. About a month ago there was a flurry of stories about a Trump “meltdown.” Here’s what happens in many cases. A reporter, let’s say for the Washington Post, has a source in the administration who says he thinks the boss is losing it. With hundreds in the administration, that’s not hard to do and then the reporter finds a second source who agrees. Again, not hard to do with a president who destroys norms. The Post runs a story and the New York Times rushes to match it, and does. Then the AP and Reuters, the wire services, match the story and it is now world-wide. They all had their sources, but the story was an empty shell, more wishful thinking than reality.
It’s a narrative they enjoyed, really, but a month out, he’s as combative and as “normal” as he ever gets.
Trump’s unwise comments followed statements by Bill Bryan, an undersecretary at Homeland Security that “the virus is dying at a much more rapid pace” from exposure to humidity or heat. That good news was quickly lost when Trump then asked a series of questions about possible ways to tackle the rapidly spreading virus.
Questions, perhaps stupid, but not directions setting a course of action. He did not do that.
“Suppose we hit the body with a tremendous ultraviolet or just very powerful light,” Trump said. “I think that hasn’t been checked but you’re going to test it,” he said to Bryan.
“And then I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. . . . It would be interesting to check that.”
That was the comment that launched 1,000 memes. Like this one:
And this one:
And this one:
With the internet on fire, Trump walked back his comments. “I was talking out of my ass and I’m amazed you Fake News fools paid any attention to me,” he did not say. Instead, he said it was sarcasm, which it was not.
Through his habitual fibbery, Trump has lost the benefit of any doubt.
But those in the media who haven’t learned how to deal with it are not doing anyone any favors.
Remember the tale of the little boy who cried wolf. Save the histrionics for the real offenses, the ones that mean something real. It is pointless to be as clueless as the president sometimes is.
The media spends more time trying to bring the President down, they should concentrate on reporting what is really going on. They are the cause for all the division going on in the country. There are quite a few problems in this country but every day they report on the President’s antics.
Not exactly trying to bring him down, just a happy offshoot of their attempt to get a scoop.
here’s three more “happy off shoots”:
Russian hoax, Kavanaugh hearings, impeachment
the fake news is sleeping with the dimocrats
I havent been watching the updates, the last two, that is. It’s tiring and repetetive for a multitude of reasons. And too long. Havent watched tv news also for two days. My android delivers what I choose. Been blogging a bit though, some guy named Bykofsky. He’s fair, some say ornery. He made me laugh ( which is my forte)……. “I was talking out of my ass and I’m amazed you Fake News fools paid any attention to me.” That’s good, but not as good as Adam Schiff’s interpretation of Trumps Ukrainian PM’s phone call. When the hell was that, anyway? Schiff wasnt fair as I remember, like Stu. In fact it was dangerous, so dangerous that it lead to Impeachment. HA! That’s really talking out of one’s ass. Remember President Obama’s ’57 states’ or ‘corpse’ pronunciation for corps, gaffes? Probably not. Must have been thinking about Heinz 57 ‘out of his ass’. Or who knows with the ‘corpse’ thing. I agree with Albert’s media take, still ‘want to bring Trump down,’ Looking to trip up for a headline would never have occurred to the Media while The Presideny of the 57 United States reigned.
Just saying.
If tRUMP weren’t such a pompous, lying piece of shit there wouldn’t be anything to take him to task over. He is the biggest piece of crap ever.
How are the plans for destroying Anderson Farm Park coming along, Al? Haven’t heard anything since we moved.
“I was talking out of my ass and I’m amazed you Fake News fools paid any attention to me”, Stu, how I have yearned to hear Trump say those words, time and time again.
HAPPY SATURDAY !!!
Pallie,
I have to agree with you, when you say that President Trump blew this one. I was watching the nightly update when the President spoke those immortal words. I cringed. From the camera angle, I was hoping against hope that he was winking with his right eye to Dr. Birx.
You are also right that the “fake news” constantly earns their name. (sic)”Sources said” is always most reliable.
The real amusing stories happen when people like Princess Nancy is eating her ice cream, or the Michigan dimocrats want to censure their own Rep. Karen Whitsett for praising the President .
The biggest shame to me, is that the far left doesn’t want to even try to come to terms, anywhere near the middle. I don’t forget that we are all Americans. We healed after the civil war, we will heal again.
Tony
This kind of behavior is why I as a former Never Trump conservative, do not watch CNN, MSNBC, etc anymore. I consult foreign media or One America News.
I always enjoy hearing conservative radio hosts as they play sound bites of the MSM using identical words and phrases to describe another Trump adventure into pile of excrement. I suspect the media monitor each other, being too lazy to actually THINK for themselves, and when one hears a clever descriptive word or phrase, immediately begins to use it. Is this what our young people are being taught in journalism school: just listen to the other guy and say the same thing?
I remember the saying”If he could walk on water,the MSM would say he can’t swim”
…and the MSM would report the invention of the light bulb by saying, “The candle business was dealt a serious blow this day.”
…and minority- and women-owned business were hurt most of all.
When at last the nation re-opens, so many Mom and Pop stores will go under it will be a tragedy beyond comprehension.
Stu – thank goodness for CNN and MSNBC- for broadcasting Governor Cuomo, the true antidote to Trump! And these two cable giants also bring us so many mayors and governors whom we woul never have the opportunity to meet otherwise.
As for Trump- oy vay!
FYI — Fox also broadcasts Cuomo, sometimes longer than CNN. I wrote about it last week. Will try to find and post here.
Here it is… Why Fox carries Cuomo…
https://stubykofsky.com/virus-why-fox-gives-airtime-to-gov-cuomo/
Bonnie,
Gov. Cuomo is a millionaire con man. Him and his brother learned well from father Mario. Why spend your own (state) money, or borrow money, if you can get the Feds to pick up the tab ? It would be very unusual, if not impossible, for some one to actually tell the unbiased truth about any topic.
Every state was lacking in ppe, including ventilators. The Feds were not that much better off. The states don’t want to go into debt supplying these neccessaary items, so the Feds put each and every one of else in debt. To the tune of THREE BILLION and counting ! I might be wrong, but I think that works out to about one hundred grand each.
Tony
The same CNN and MSNBC that ‘reported’ the Russian collusion story-that-never-was? Bonnie, you’re flying on one wing (a left wing, of course).
Bonnie, stick to your beliefs no matter what the lying tRUMP stooges try to tell you.
I read it again and I said it back then that it was a good read. And I’ll say again what I said above about our host, he’s fair! Thank you Stu.