Latest shot at Trump: Weaponized coronavirus

FPI / March 6, 2020

Most Republicans believe that the corporate media is using the coronavirus "as a tool to get" President Donald Trump, a new Rasmussen Reports found.

The Rasmussen poll said: “60 percent of Republicans believe that the media and some politicians are playing up the threat of coronavirus to hurt President Trump.”

The poll revealed that many believe the White House has handled the crisis well.

“46 percent of all likely U.S. voters rate the federal government’s response to the coronavirus as good or excellent. 30 percent say it’s doing a poor job,” the poll said.

The appointment of Vice President Mike Pence to head up the united government effort to stop the spread of the virus was also criticized by Democrats and the media, with many making the bizarre claim that Pence was "anti-science."

"But over the past week, the administration has won applause for its efforts, and Pence’s calming influence has helped to steer attention to the effort to stop the spread of the virus," Washington Exmainer columnist Paul Bedard noted.

Rasmussen also found that the public has a better view of how Trump is handling the crisis than former President Barack Obama’s handling of the ebola scare.

“By comparison, 40 percent of Americans gave the government’s response to Ebola good or excellent marks in October 2014 after the first case was diagnosed in this country. Less than three weeks later, that number had fallen to 31 percent,” said Rasmussen.

Many of the nation's top health care officials believe that action taken by Trump to ban flights from China and focus on testing of illegal border crossers from China has significantly slowed the impact of the virus in the U.S.

But Democrats, and their media allies, still found ways to criticize Trump for the action he took in January. Joe Biden called the action "xenophobic."

“This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia — hysterical xenophobia — and fearmongering,” said Biden the day after the travel restrictions were imposed.

CNN ran a story warning that “the U.S. coronavirus travel ban could backfire” and have the effect of “stigmatizing countries and ethnicities.”

The Chinese Communist Party’s official mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, called the ban “racist.”

CNN also slammed Trump for not naming any people of color to his initial coronavirus task force, as if the virus can tell what race its victims are.

The New York Post's Miranda Devine noted: "You could hardly blame the president for calling all this unfair criticism the 'new hoax' of the Democrats and Resistance media, to try to take him down, like the Russia collusion hoax and the impeachment gambit. Of course, then his opponents twisted his words to pretend he had called the coronavirus a 'hoax.' ”

Devine continued: "When Trump pointed out that he had said no such thing, which the footage of his remarks confirms, the Daily News claimed he had 'backed away from his claim that the coronavirus is a ‘hoax.’ ”

Devine concluded: "The problem is that Trump Derangement Syndrome stands in the way of the bipartisan cooperation required to defeat this epidemic."

Meanwhile, Washington Times security analyst Bill Gertz had a different blame thought: "Trade deal with China for President Trump to pursue: Make Beijing pay for the damage caused by the Wuhan virus. They have trillions in cash reserves and China’s Communist Party should be held accountable for China making the world sick with new microbes."

Free Press International