If you’ve watched any of Trump’s daily briefings you know he spends a good amount of time talking about how many ventilators we have, that we are the leader in building them, providing them. Seriously, it’s like we have ventilators coming out of our … armpits.
Or something.
And the reason he’s doing that is, of course, to inform us, but also to slam the media for attacking him early on about a lack of ventilators.
Brit Hume said it far better.
They really made an awful mess of this. https://t.co/F3GSOzLjSi
— Brit Hume (@brithume) April 20, 2020
From National Review:
This also meant that much of the press coverage get it exactly backward. The media portrayed as an inherent failure the fact that the administration gave states a portion of their requests. (“Trump sent Arizona a fraction of the ventilators it sought,” a Vox headline said. “Republicans still framed it as a big win.”) In reality, not giving governors what they wanted was integral to the success of the overall operation.
If, for instance, the administration had tried to fulfill New York’s initial stated need for 40,000 ventilators, everything would have gone out the door to New York, and for no good reason. There was immense political pressure to send the ventilators anyway, although it would have been a mistake. “In the moment, that wasn’t 100 percent clear,” says the senior administration official. “There was a lot of pressure to send them all, because the pressure is basically, ‘How is it going to look if you’re holding in a stockpile and people need them?’”
None of this is to say there weren’t real needs in New York and New Jersey. Some 8,000 ventilators were sent out from the reserve, many of them to those two places, which were at times operating on very thin margins.
The media cannot get out of their own way.
The media moved on from ventilators to "more tests" in record time. Apparently, we're supposed to test people whether they have symptoms or not to meet an artificial benchmark.
— Carolina (@RealappraiserSC) April 20, 2020
You guys noticed that too? They just keep on movin’ those goalposts.
Practically every week one can write a story with the headline "The media really blew the (fill in the blank) story."
— Curtice Mang (@curticemang) April 20, 2020
Their screw-ups certainly help with our job security.
Heh.
Another good example of why so many of us despise the media.
— David Hannes (@DavidHannes1) April 20, 2020
The media could play such a major role in helping us get through this pandemic. It is shameful the way they are acting. This has to be the poorest journalism has ever served us. Very sad what has happened to this once noble profession.
— Thom Kohl (@cabbageguy) April 20, 2020
Right?! Imagine the good the media could do if they weren’t so focused on taking down the president.
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