Fox News’ absurd reaction to Biden’s coronavirus speech, he explained

Fox News reacted to President Joe Biden’s prime-time announcement that all American adults would be eligible for a coronavirus vaccine on May 1 and the country’s goal is to return to an appearance of normality by July 4, insisting that former President Donald Trump really deserves the credit. But that statement cannot withstand scrutiny.

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

To be clear – Trump deserves some credit for the fact that several vaccines were developed so quickly. As my colleague Dylan Scott reported last October, the federal government’s multi-billion dollar investment to help companies like Moderna and Johnson & Johnson develop vaccines has undoubtedly helped the country reach a point where there is finally some light at the end of the tunnel. . Biden acknowledged this, saying in December that “I think the [Trump] management deserves some credit, obtaining this [vaccine effort] off the ground, Operation Warp Speed. “

But vaccines don’t do very well if there is no plan to put them on the guns, and that’s when Trump really fell short. As was the case when the U.S. struggled to increase coronavirus testing infrastructure in the early days of the pandemic, the Trump administration’s plan to distribute the vaccine did little more than pass the burden on to the resource-poor states. Trump’s failure to plan the “last mile” resulted in episodes in which unused vaccines were discarded weeks before Biden took office.

So while it is going too far to say that Trump does not deserve credit, the criticisms with which Biden opened his prime-time speech are entirely fair.

“A year ago, we were hit by a virus that silenced and spread without control. Denials for days, weeks and then months, ”he said, alluding to Trump’s effort to minimize the coronavirus before and during his failed reelection campaign. “This led to more deaths, more infections, more stress and more loneliness.”

Biden moved on, barely referring to the ex-president the rest of the way. But he had already provided Fox News with something to be angry about.

“He kicks them in the groin”

It’s hard to imagine a pandemic response that resulted in more than half a million Americans killed as a success, but during a rant about Biden’s speech on Friday morning, Fox and friends co-host Brian Kilmeade tried.

“We don’t need to look at the 500,000 dead; we had that moment, ”he said. “We are going to talk about the future going forward. Every time he has a chance to praise the previous government, not only does he not praise, but he kicks in the groin. “

Kilmeade’s suggestion that Biden took a cheap shot in criticizing Trump’s response to the coronavirus echoed what host presenter Sean Hannity said on his show shortly after the speech.

“Joe Biden – he needs to pick up the phone, I suggest, call Mar-a-Lago and, yes, bring unity to the country, as he says he desperately wants, and thank President Donald Trump,” he said. He later added: “No Trump, no vaccine, Joe. Quit taking credit for something, frankly, that you had nothing to do with.

It is true that when Trump stepped down, about 1 million vaccines were being administered each day. But Biden almost tripled that rate in less than two months.

Therefore, Hannity’s comment that Biden “has nothing to do” with the progress of the United States’ vaccination effort is false. Biden oversaw the federal government’s purchase of hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines, making possible the aggressive schedule he outlined on Thursday. And his government oversaw the development and implementation of vaccine distribution plans that do more than just depend on the states.

But the Fox News spin is not just immune to reality; it is also immune to shame. A panel discussion on Hannity featuring Trump’s former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, and Trump’s former press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, went after Biden for being too prepared – proving that Fox was prepared to attack Biden himself. he said anything less than “Thank you, Mr. Trump. You deserve all the credit. “

In the same vein, while Hannity hammers Biden every night because of small verbal gaffes that he insists are evidence of some type of cognitive impairment, a Chyron on his Thursday program denigrated Biden merely by “surviving[ing]”A“ short speech with a script ”. Screw it if you do it, screw it if you don’t.

It gets even more absurd

The far-fetched version of Kilmeade and Hannity was nothing compared to the comments of Fox News host Mark Levin, who made such a confusing speech on Hannity’s show that you might be wondering if he saw the same speech.

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

Even the fact that Biden says the country is on the right track to be able to safely hold small July 4th meetings was considered bad by Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, who complained that Biden is acting like a tyrant in telling them the that makes.

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

“And choosing Independence Day as the day he says he can allow people to get together is so un-American,” said Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway on the Ingraham show. “Joe Biden can’t tell me when I can have a barbecue in my backyard.”

As ridiculous as all of this may seem, it is a serious thing for most of the approximately 2.5 million people who are tuning in to watch Fox News prime time programs, which remain the most highly rated programs in cable news. , even without Trump in the White House.

Then, on Friday morning, Hannity’s false and misleading speech about how Biden should call Trump and thank him was covered as if it were news through one of the network’s “news side” programs, illustrating one of the ways Fox regularly washes its opinion content in the news cycle.

Fox News is having difficulties with President Biden

Trump inherited the longest string of job growth from former President Barack Obama when he took office, but he still characterized the state of affairs he inherited as “a mess” even in the early days of his government. Fox did little to stop this turn. So the idea that Biden has some sort of moral obligation to give Trump credit for anything is, at best, hypocritical.

But in its struggle to strike a popular president who just signed a $ 1.9 trillion Covid relief law, Fox News is normalizing the absurd, for example, trying to turn the mundane into huge scandals and linking Biden to issues. of complaints of the cultural war.

And they are not just the hosts of prime time. On Friday afternoon, Chris Wallace compared Biden to criticizing Trump’s response to Covid to Trump’s treatment of Obama, saying that Biden is “being as courteous to his predecessor as Donald Trump was to his predecessor.”

Donald Trump, you may remember, achieved political prominence in 2011 by spreading racist conspiracy theories that Obama is not really American. Therefore, Wallace’s comment is as false as false equivalences can be.

It is tempting to ignore this, especially due to Fox News’ diminishing relevance after Trump’s departure from the White House. But, as Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) demonstrated on Friday, elite Republicans share Hannity’s twisted worldview.

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

Scott’s statement is sure to please Trump, who launched a tweet demonstration earlier this week, saying “I hope everyone will remember when they’re getting the Covid-19 vaccine (often called the China Virus), that if I weren’t the president, you wouldn’t be getting that beautiful ‘injection’ for 5 years at best, and I probably wouldn’t be able to do it at all. I hope you all remember! “

But Scott’s praise for Trump is based on false premises. He said that, thanks to Trump, there were “300 million doses ready to be put on the guns” on the first day of Biden’s presidency. But that is not true.

According to a recent check by Kaiser Health News, Trump had enough vaccine contracts in place to vaccinate 200 million Americans when he stepped down, but this is not the same as “ready-to-put doses.” Furthermore, in addition to vaccinating healthcare professionals and people in assisted living facilities, Trump’s plan to put them in his arms did little more than offer thoughts and prayers to states.

It is not surprising, however, that the presenters on the “news side” with whom Scott spoke did not offer any resistance.