In the wake of the new omicron variant, Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume told "The Brian Kilmeade Show" on Monday that since the inception of the coronavirus pandemic, the cures from politicians have been worse than the virus.
BRIT HUME: It looks to me like we're freaking out again and making the same kinds of mistakes that we made the first and second and third time around.
There are ripple effects of that. And this
has been the issue from the very beginning of the pandemic. And that is that in
our efforts to stamp it out, to stop it in its tracks, which was probably never
going to be possible, we undertook all sorts of efforts without ever seriously
considering the side effects of our efforts. You know, Trump may have made a
lot of mistakes on this, but he was right when he said, you don't want a
situation where the cure is worse than the disease.
When you think of the school days missed by
kids, really how much that contributes to continued inequality and educational
outcomes that these poor kids who you know, who many of whose parents don't
even have a computer in the house or who are struggling to try to be educated
in this setting where, you know, they're really not in school, they're really
not getting instruction and so on. It's very serious.
You have health outcomes affected by the fact
that people missed appointments for screenings and treatment and so on for
cancer and other diseases. The supply chain problems we’re having as a
consequence of COVID and the restrictions that were placed on travel and with
people out of work and so on. So we're going to be feeling the pain from those
for a long time.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/omicron-variant-covid-cures-worse-virus-brit-hume
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BIDEN’S COVID SCORECARD IS WORSE THAN TRUMP’S
By Paul Mirengoff | POWERLINE
President
Biden speaks about the bipartisan infrastructure bill in the State Dinning Room
of the White House, Saturday, Nov. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex
Brandon) (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Joe Biden has ordered a ban on travel from eight African countries due to the emergence of the latest coronavirus variant. The countries from which Biden is cutting off travel are South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi.
When Donald Trump banned travel from China in the early
days of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, Biden called the move xenophobic. I
suppose that makes Biden’s travel ban racist by similar reckoning.
Speaking of Trump, Biden, and covid, the Wall
Street Journal points out that deaths in the U.S. from that virus
since Biden was inaugurated exceed the number of deaths that had occurred when,
during a 2020 campaign debate, Biden proclaimed: “Anyone who is responsible for
that many deaths should not remain as President of the United States of
America.” At the time Biden proposed this disqualifier from holding the
presidency, the U.S. had recorded 220,000 covid deaths, according to the
Journal. Since inauguration day, it has recorded 350,000. And counting.
The comparison isn’t “apples to apples.” When Biden made
his statement during the debate, the pandemic had been raging in the U.S. for
about six and a half months. It’s been about ten months since the sad day Biden
became president.
On the other hand, we had no vaccine during almost the
entirety of Trump’s presidency. We’ve had one — developed and distributed
during Trump’s presidency — throughout the time Biden has occupied the Oval
Office.
Furthermore, as the Journal reminds us, Biden promised to
“shut down the virus, not the country,” and he claimed to have a plan to
accomplish this. This was BS.
So was his statement that “if [Trump] had done his job,
had done his job from the beginning, all the [220,000] people would still be
alive.” Has any presidential candidate ever defamed his opponent so flagrantly
on a matter of policy? If so, I don’t recall it.
Here’s another comparison between Trump and Biden on the
pandemic — one that’s closer to “apples to apples.” During the debates, Biden
slammed Trump’s performance by claiming that Europe had done much better in
limiting covid deaths than the U.S. At the time, however, the number of
deaths per capita in the U.S. was in line with four major European countries it
made sense to compare us with — the UK, Spain, France, and Italy. Like the
U.S., these nations had reliable data, large populations, and lots of foreign
visitors before travel was restricted.
As Trump’s presidency drew to a close, per capita deaths
from the virus in the U.S. were about at
about the midpoint of per capita deaths in these countries — nearly
identical to the UK, a little lower than Italy and Spain, somewhat higher than
France.
What about now? Today, per
capita deaths attributed to the virus are higher in the U.S. than in all four
of the comparator nations. Currently, the U.S. has recorded 2,393 deaths
per capita from the virus. France, Spain, the UK, and Italy come in at 1,814,
1,880, 2,113, and 2,213 respectively.
The U.S., therefore, has lost ground to these four
countries in terms of covid deaths under Joe Biden. This, despite the fact that
the U.S. (under Trump’s leadership) was considerably faster off the mark than France,
Spain, and Italy in getting the vaccine approved and into arms. (The UK, free
from EU constraints, was a little faster than the U.S.)
Personally, I don’t think presidents should be judged
based, without more, on how many Americans die during a pandemic. But Joe Biden
based much of his case for the presidency on precisely this criteria. In both
debates with Donald Trump, he led with that case. His pitch was as effective as
it was crude.
By Joe Biden’s crude metrics, he has failed
abjectly in dealing with the Wuhan coronavirus,
both in absolute terms and in comparison to Europe. By his rhetoric, Biden
“should not remain as President of the United States of America.”
I’m glad the Wall Street Journal has called Biden out on
this. Don’t expect to read about it elsewhere in traditional media.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/11/bidens-covid-scorecard-is-worse-than-trumps.php
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Media hit for 'sophomoric and ridiculous'
take on Biden's travel ban after calling Trump's restrictions racist
The
area for TSA screening of travelers at JFK airport's Terminal 1 is relatively
empty, Friday, March 13, 2020, in New York (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
President Biden imposed a travel ban on several African countries in the wake of the new strain of the coronavirus, the omicron variant, despite calling his predecessor "racist" and "xenophobic" for imposing his own travel restrictions - a flashback the media has largely ignored.
In 2017, then-President Trump imposed travel
restrictions on six predominantly Muslim countries over concerns of improper
vetting. Liberal media often referred to it as the "Muslim
ban." When Covid began spreading throughout the world at the beginning of
2020, Trump would then block travel from China and six other countries,
including Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania. Biden,
a presidential candidate at the time, suggested Trump's actions were
"xenophobic."
"We are in the midst of a crisis with the
coronavirus," Biden tweeted the day after Trump imposed travel restrictions from China into the U.S.
"We need to lead the way with science - not Donald Trump’s record of
hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the worst possible person to
lead our country through a global health emergency."
Biden also referred to Trump's temporary ban on African
countries as a "disgrace."
But now as president, Biden now appears to be
taking a similar course. The first cases of the omicron variant
are expected to have originated in southern Africa. Biden announced on
Friday that the U.S. would be restricting travel from South Africa, and seven
other countries, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and
Malawi. The ban began on Monday.
At the time of Trump's travel ban announcement, the
media had a meltdown of sorts and suggested it was a racist move. But the
tone of this week's headlines suggest they're more understanding of Biden's
travel bans.
Juxtaposed CNN pieces on the dueling travel bans showed
that the network was much kinder to Biden's more recent restrictions.
The New York Times Opinion page ran a piece titled,
"The Racism at the Heart of Trump's ‘Travel Ban'" in February 2020.
But this week, the newspaper ran a tamer title, "United States will bar
travelers from 8 countries."
Fox News contributor Joe Concha tried to put his finger
on why the press is okay with Biden's ban.
"Because Joe Biden’s ban comes from good, decent
place in an effort to save lives, while Trump just did it as an excuse to ban
people from coming here," Concha told Fox News Digital. "As
utterly sophomoric and ridiculous as those arguments are in applying motive,
there are actually enough viewers and readers out there willing to believe
it."
Biden is "replicating what he himself
called racist," "Unfiltered" host Dan Bongino said
on Saturday while sounding off on media hypocrisy. Georgia gubernatorial candidate
Vernon Jones also wondered where the outraged headlines were.
"The legacy media never disappoint," the Media
Research Center's Dan Gainor told Fox News Digital. "They continue to
embrace their role as public relations staff for the Biden administration. The
omicron variant has been identified in at least a dozen countries so far.
Nearly all of those weren't included in Biden's list of nations where he
blocked travel. The key reason South Africa was blocked is it actually
identified the virus. Yet, the press refused to call out Biden in
any similar way to what they did to President Donald Trump."
"Leftist journalists continue to obey my rule of
media coverage: Everything left is right and everything right is
wrong," he concluded.
At her Monday press briefing, White House Press Secretary
Jen Psaki claimed Biden was critical of Trump’s "xenophobic tweet"
and not critical of the travel restrictions themselves. Media observers
pushed back on that explanation.
Fox News' Andrew Mark Miller contributed to
this report.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/media-biden-travel-ban-trump-restrictions-racist
