RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/armchair-quarterbacks-try-to-rewrite-history-on-coronavirus/

COVID-19 caught lots of people in America by surprise. We shouldn’t pretend otherwise for cynical political gain.

This morning, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough claimed that, unlike the Trump administration, “Everybody saw this coming in early January.”

If Scarborough knew that a deadly, once-in-a-century pandemic was about to descend on the nation in early January — I assume he considers himself part of “everyone” — why on God’s earth didn’t he warn his susceptible viewers that they should begin social distancing? Why didn’t his producers book a single expert who could beseech his viewers to start wearing masks, to shutter their non-essential businesses, and to avoid church and sporting events? Why didn’t he mention coronavirus at all? Even in late January, nearly a full month after “everyone knew,” Scarborough’s show was dominated by the Donald Trump impeachment trial.

As far as I can tell, in the entire month of January, Morning Joe didn’t reference the coronavirus once to his 2.6 million followers on Twitter. Imagine the thousands of lives Scarborough could have saved if he had only shared his insight.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/mike-lindell-hero-not-yamiche-alcindor/

Why is a grandstanding journalist seen as more virtuous than a self-sacrificing business owner?

MyPillow CEO Michael Lindell, a self-made former crack addict, is going to transform 75 percent of his manufacturing capacity to make 10,000 cotton face masks per day by the end of the week, ramping up production to 50,000 a day in a month. That sounds like a patriotic act to me, especially given that Lindell is undertaking the effort without being forced to do so by a federal agency. I hope the guy becomes a billionaire after this is all over.

NBC? Not so much. The headline on its “analysis” of Lindell’s remarks was “Trump fluffs MyPillow in Rose Garden.” This matched the basic tone taken by a large faction within the political press. Why? Presumably because, at the end of his remarks, Lindell claimed that the Lord Almighty had helped elect Donald Trump president to save our once-beleaguered nation from its alleged depravations. Listen, if there is a God, I hope He refrains from tipping the scales of presidential contests. But it’s not surprising to hear an evangelical Christian talking about the world this way — unless, that is, you’ve never met one.

Of course, anyone who shows anything less than hostility toward the president is immediately cast as a reactionary, and their actions dismissed as questionable and self-serving. Many of the CEOs who have stood with Trump at his press conferences — this week, or in weeks prior — hold varying religious and partisan beliefs. The press didn’t have similar qualms about the CEOs of CVS or Walgreens, because they kept their views to themselves.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/03/29/the_medias_top_lies_and_spins_about_covid-19.html

The world as we know it has changed dramatically over the last few weeks in light of the coronavirus pandemic. Countries are on lockdown, there are shelter-in-place orders, nonessential businesses have been ordered to close, and people have been mandated to quarantine.

Here at home, the coronavirus has been a testament to American resilience. People everywhere are working to flatten the curve together (by keeping their distance and staying inside) and to ensure those who are most vulnerable are taken care of.    

In such uncertain times, Americans can only hope that the media would follow suit and put aside partisan politics in the face of a global pandemic. Sadly, some journalists and fake news outlets can’t help themselves.

The media distorts and misleads, takes statements out of context, treats assumptions as facts, and in general, seems to want to sow as much rancor and fear as possible. This is irresponsible journalism in a time when the nation needs just the opposite.

President Trump is their favorite target, as these examples show.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/once_again_trump_was_right_and_the_media_were_wrong.html

The moment Trump touted his optimism about chloroquine, the media turned it into a poison – but new data say that Trump was right again.

In February, China reported that chloroquine could fight coronavirus, which led to a burst of media optimism. However, when President Trump said he hoped that chloroquine might cure coronavirus, the media instantly turned on the drug. Unsurprisingly, the media were wrong. The lead doctor of the latest study on the drug says chloroquine is so helpful it would be unethical to deny it to control groups.

We first learned about chloroquine in mid-February, when Sun Yanrong, the deputy head of the China National Center for Biotechnology Development, announced that it was one of three drugs that the Chinese had successfully used to treat coronavirus. For a month, the media thought chloroquine could be the answer.

For example, in early March, UPI reported favorably that South Korean experts recommended anti-malarial drugs to treat coronavirus. On March 17, NBC News reported that chloroquine was one “of the options being explored” because it was “useful in blunting the effects of coronavirus.”

Everything changed, though, on March 20 when, in a press conference, President Trump said he was optimistic that chloroquine would be a magic bullet against coronavirus:

But I will say that I am a man that comes from a very positive school when it comes to, in particular, one of these drugs. And we’ll see how it works out, Peter. I’m not saying it will, but I think that people may be surprised.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/suffering_from_existential_despair_the_nyt_found_itself_a_new_scapegoat.html

One can feel the existential anguish oozing off of every page and pixel at The New York Times. That’s not because coronavirus is approaching apocalyptic proportions, with mass die-offs comparable to the year 1348 when the Black Death was at its apex. Instead, the Times is confronting a different problem: President Donald Trump’s poll numbers are doing very well. His recent town hall was the most-watched town hall in cable history. His daily press conferences enthrall so many people that the media are desperate to stop televising them.

Clearly, the Times had to bring out the big guns to ensure that Americans understand that, not only is Trump the ultimate “Orange Man Bad,” but also that his supporters must continue to be recognized as the “Deplorables” they are. To that end, the Times published one of the most vicious opinion pieces ever seen in its pages, and that’s saying a lot.

Katherine Stewart has a bee in her bonnet, and that bee is her hatred for Christianity. She’s written a book with the give-away title, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. That makes her the perfect person to write an opinion piece stating that “The Religious  Right’s Hostility to Science Is Crippling Our Coronavirus Response: Trump’s response to the pandemic has been haunted by the science denialism of  his ultraconservative religious allies.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/27/new-york-times-op-ed-blames-christians-not-china-for-spread-of-wuhan-coronavirus/

A New York Times op-ed published Friday is casting blame on the evangelical movement for the Wuhan coronavirus plaguing the nation.

The piece, titled, “The Road to Coronavirus Hell Was Paved By Evangelicals,” written by Katherine Stewart is filled with undue condescension and mockery of Christians that is becoming the norm among our mainstream media elites.

The crux of Stewart’s piece is that the Republican Party has become embedded with a spiritual movement whose beliefs fly contradictory to science, blaming the idiocy and extreme actions of a few who defied public health orders against large gatherings to stigmatize half the country.

Stewart’s piece however, only further exposes a deep disdain for the Christian faith through the employment of hypocritical arguments in an attempt to smear the religious right.

“Religious nationalism has brought to American politics the conviction that our political differences are a battle between absolute evil and absolute good,” Stewart wrote. “When you’re engaged in a struggle between the ‘party of life’ and ‘party of death,’ as some religious nationalists now frame our political divisions, you don’t need to worry about crafting careful policy based on expert opinion or analysis.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/opinion/coronavirus-trump-evangelicals.html

The Road to Coronavirus Hell Was Paved by Evangelicals

Trump’s response to the pandemic has been haunted by the science denialism of his ultraconservative religious allies.

By

Katherine Stewart

Ms. Stewart is the author of “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/coronavirus-crisis-political-media-failing-america/

Their ineptitude, bias, childishness, and outright stupidity have become a genuine danger to the health of the republic.

Here are some of the public figures and institutions that Americans hold in higher esteem than the media according to Gallup:

Hospitals,Their child’s school and daycare centers,State governments,Their employer, CDC and NIH, Mike Pence,Donald Trump ,Congress.

Only one institution that Gallup asked about, the media, had negative approval rating — sitting 19 points behind its archenemy Donald Trump. And there are likely many other people and places that the public has more trust in than journalists.

This reality is a disaster for a liberal democracy, and much of it is brought on by the press’s own blinkered, sanctimonious, and transparently partisan temperament. On this topic, I could provide a book-length list of grievances. Every day brings an exasperating number of misleading and bad-faith takes by political journalists and “fact-checkers.”

But for now, I’ll just note that it’s not merely a problem of traditional bias among reporters and cable news networks, which preach exclusively to their choirs (no one is innocent on that count.) I’ve long read major newspapers, whose nonpolitical product is often amazing, through a filter. The institutional bias at the Washington Post and the New York Times certainly isn’t new. But there used to be a corresponding level of professional gravitas that engendered reader trust.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/teen-vogue-goes-full-marxist-wants-destruction-of-capitalism-in-response-to-covid-19/

Ok, I know, you don’t go to Teen Vogue for scholarly economic or political analysis, and nobody there has heard of Milton Friedman or Thomas Sowell. Nor do I expect it to have much in-depth coverage of how to fight back against COVID-19. In fact, I’d expect little more than an analysis of the cutest congressman or how to participate in politics even if you can’t legally vote for three more years. As a father, it no longer sneaks up on me when Marxist indoctrination is woven into the societal fabric of being a teen in America. After all, this is the same rag that ran the series a few years ago teaching teens how to have anal sex. And yet, when the writers interrupt their drivel to run articles openly calling for the destruction of capitalism in response to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, even I sit up and take notice.

The following articles appeared this week in Teen Vogue in its continuing coverage of COVID-19:

The Coronavirus Pandemic Demonstrates the Failures of Capitalism

The Coronavirus Makes Me Wish We Already Had a President Bernie Sanders

With the Coronavirus Crisis, We Must Cancel Student Debt Immediately

Rent Strike 2020 Is Calling for a Rent Freeze Because of the Coronavirus