Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden makes a point during a Democratic presidential primary debate, Friday, Feb. 7, 2020, hosted by ABC News, Apple News, and WMUR-TV at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
An Associated Press fact check shows Biden and Bloomberg both lied about President Trump’s response to the coronavirus. This is no surprise. Democrats began their campaign against the Trump Administration’s handling of this growing threat on Sunday after the Russia 2.0 hoax collapsed.
At the Democratic debate in South Carolina, Mike Bloomberg said, “There’s nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing. And he’s defunded — he’s defunded Centers for Disease Control, CDC, so we don’t have the organization we need. This is a very serious thing.”
Joe Biden drew a comparison between the Obama Administration’s response to a similar threat and the Trump Administration’s response to the current threat and said, “We increased the budget of the CDC. We increased the NIH budget…He’s wiped all that out…He cut the funding for the entire effort.”
They’re both wrong to say the agencies have seen their money cut. Bloomberg is repeating the false allegation in a new ad that states the U.S. is unprepared for the virus because of “reckless cuts” to the CDC. Trump’s budgets have proposed cuts to public health, only to be overruled by Congress, where there’s strong bipartisan support for agencies such as the CDC and NIH. Instead, financing has increased.
Indeed, the money that government disease detectives first tapped to fight the latest outbreak was a congressional fund created for health emergencies.
Some public health experts say a bigger concern than White House budgets is the steady erosion of a CDC grant program for state and local public health emergency preparedness — the front lines in detecting and battling new disease. But that decline was set in motion by a congressional budget measure that predates Trump.
The broader point about there being “nobody here” to coordinate the response sells short what’s in place to handle an outbreak.
The public health system has a playbook to follow for pandemic preparation — regardless of who’s president or whether specific instructions are coming from the White House. Those plans were put into place in anticipation of another flu pandemic, but are designed to work for any respiratory-borne disease.
Among the health authorities overseeing the work are Dr. Anne Schuchat, CDC’s principal deputy director and a veteran of previous outbreaks, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, NIH’s infectious disease chief who has advised six presidents.
Frankly, I’m amazed that the AP actually fact checked this. They need to go after Pelosi and Schumer next.
Anyway, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) accused Biden and Bloomberg of outright lying. In an earlier tweet, he wrote that they’re both politicizing this issue, but that they can’t help themselves.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw
✔@RepDanCrenshaw
There are Democrats outright lying about the President’s response to coronavirus. Bloomberg is actually running ads that say CDC funding was cut - & it’s patently false.
There is no need to politicize this important issue, but they can’t help themselves. https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104 …
AP FACT CHECK: Democrats distort coronavirus readiness
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic presidential contenders are describing the federal infectious-disease bureaucracy as rudderless and ill-prepared for the coronavirus threat because of budget cuts and...
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Brit Hume also took aim at the two in the tweet below. To answer your question Brit, no.
Brit Hume
✔@brithume
Is there no issue serious enough that politicians won’t make false claims about it for political benefit? https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104 …
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic presidential contenders are describing the federal infectious-disease bureaucracy as rudderless and ill-prepared for the coronavirus threat because of budget cuts and...
apnews.com
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One would think that the threat of a pandemic which could potentially affect all Americans, regardless of political affiliation, might give the Democrats pause before. At least briefly, politicians united after 9/11. If I recall correctly, Tom Daschle and President Bush actually embraced.
But that is not to be – especially so close to a presidential election. Since everything else they’ve tried to destroy the President has blown up, they just can’t waste this opportunity.
As stock prices plunge for the third day this week, pushing the market into correction territory (a drop of 10% or more), the left is rooting for a crash (a drop off 20% or more). ‘Please God, please send us a total collapse of the stock market to save us from another four years of Trump.’
Last summer and fall, the media published article after article in which they predicted economic doom and gloom. Unfortunately for them, their dreams were dashed.
Recently, there’s been a resurgence of those articles as Democrats hope that the economic effects of the coronavirus will cause a recession. Here’s one from an analyst at NatAlliance Securities, “The Last Time This Happened Was Days Before The Great Depression.” And two others: “The Economic Cataclysm Ahead” and “World Stocks At Key Support As Pandemic Fears Could Lead To Next Crash.”
The highly partisan New York Times columnist Gail Collins penned an op-ed today, in which she blames Trump for the coronavirus. Its title? “Let’s call it the Trumpvirus: If you’re feeling awful, you know who to blame.” Does she have any idea how ridiculous she sounds?
The press seized upon Trump’s lackluster performance at his news conference about the coronavirus on Wednesday evening, criticizing him for “handing it off” to Vice President Mike Pence and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
The New York Times wrote, “Mr. Trump delivered an almost casual account of the administration’s response to the coronavirus, leaving it to the experts appearing with him to relay the real information and assure a jittery public.”
None of them bothered to consider that he’d just returned that day from a state visit to India where he represented America on the world state, and quite admirably so. He had not been focused on the latest coronavirus news and was probably quite jet-lagged.
Democrats are already declaring his response to the pandemic that hasn’t even hit yet, to be incompetent.
As the AP states in their Fact Check, “The public health system has a playbook to follow for pandemic preparation — regardless of who’s president or whether specific instructions are coming from the White House.” Preparations are in place. And they are bipartisan.
The Democrats don’t care about the coronavirus. It’s just another shot at destroying President Trump.
