posted March 27, 2020 12:23 AM            

March 26, 2020
The media are engaged in a shameful sustained attack against Trump
Andrea Widburg

On Tuesday, President Trump, Vice President Pence, Deborah Birx, and surgeon general Vice Admiral Jerome Adams sat down for a Fox News virtual town hall. It was the most watched town hall in cable news history, with around 4.4 million viewers. Americans are obviously hungry to hear information directly from those people who will make decisions about how our country approaches the coronavirus situation.

In addition to the town hall, President Trump has been making himself and his team available every day for press conferences. While the president is always going to be Trump-esque, he's learned the virtue of gracefully stepping aside so that the experts can speak directly to the public.

These same press conferences have given Americans an unfiltered view of the mainstream media's so-called journalists. The people get to see, without editing, how reporters treat the president with profound disrespect; argue with him constantly; and obsess not about things that concern Americans, but about whether it's racist to call the current virus by its geographic place of origin.

Unsurprisingly, when voters can see Trump in action without the hate-filled media mediating, the president continues to rise in the public's estimation. Indeed, a very uncomfortable journalist had to break that news to Joe Biden:

BIDEN: "The president's numbers with the public have gone up in handling this crisis, but they haven't gone up in terms of his presidency."

*awkward silence*

REPORTER: Actually, his job approval is also up.

BIDEN: "Well, I hope that he's so strong that he's up way above that." pic.twitter.com/VfWksMSpJi

No wonder that the media are running scared. Andrea Mitchell spoke for all of them when she said that, even as Biden has mostly vanished from view:

We're also seeing some polls indicating the President's approval ratings among Democrats and independents skyrocketing to their highest levels yet. Some 60% approval ratings for the way he's handling this crisis as he continues to hold these briefings. The briefings are working for the President.

In frustration, she added: "No matter what he says, people seem to be seeing him as a leader, at least more people do."

Horrified at the thought that Trump is proving to be a good president whom Americans have come to respect, the media have decided upon a two-pronged approach. The first prong is to get Trump off the air.

KUOW in Seattle, which is part of National Public Radio, announced that "we will not be airing the briefings live due to a pattern of false or misleading information provided that cannot be fact checked in real time." Since Trump leaves the fact statements to the experts and just gives his opinion, on matters scientific, what this really means is that "we can no longer accept that our listeners will hear Trump without our first telling them what to hate."

ABC relic Ted Koppel was even more explicit about what he thinks "journalists" should do, and it has nothing to do with letting Americans hear their president speak during a time of crisis.

Training a camera on a live event, and just letting it play out, is technology, not journalism; journalism requires editing and context. I recognize that presidential utterances occupy a unique category. Within that category, however, President Trump has created a special compartment all his own.

The other media tactic to destroy Trump, even if it means terrifying Americans and killing hope, is to oppose him reflexively. This is no more obvious than with chloroquine as a potential life-saver. Trump expressed the hope that it would work, so the media are piling on to say it can't possibly work. You can read about the media games here. Tucker Carlson also did a powerful segment about the media's bias and agenda: