Posted on 05/31/2020 7:11:16 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Kayleigh McEnany's White House press briefings instantly became must-watch TV when she first took the podium on May 1. You need only watch one to see why, and it's not because of her looks. Or at least not entirely. The one on Tuesday, May 26, was particularly entertaining, first as a display of a certain kind of journalism and second as show of how faulty data can still have their uses.
The fireworks began when Ryan Lizza had his chance to pop a question. Lizza is a decent representative of the type. Since graduating from U.C. Berkeley in the mid-1990s, he's had stints as a reporter for or contributor to the New Republic, Atlantic magazine, New York magazine, GQ, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and currently Politico and CNN. His longest stint — ten years at the New Yorker — ended in 2017 when he was fired for alleged sexual misconduct, which he strenuously denied. A victim, one might say, of #MeToo.
Lizza's question to McEnany was typical of the genre. Its aim was not to garner information that might shed light on the goings-on in the government. It was to juice up the reporter's (or his employer's) prefabricated story angle. Thus:
Kayleigh, we're about to cross the 100,000 dead American milestone. What would — what does the White House view as having — by Election Day, what does the White House view as the number of dead Americans, where you can say that we successfully defeated this pandemic? Is there a number?
Cute, eh? Lizza must have been giggling to himself when he rehearsed that one. Its purpose, apparently, was to evoke in a reader's mind the image of President Trump triumphing over the bodies of dead Americans, as if he and not COVID-19 had killed them.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Kayeigh’s response to the reporter’s question:
(EXCERPT)
Yeah, you know, every loss of life counts. We say 100,000, but like the President says, you know, one death is something to be mourned. These 100,000 individuals have a face. The President takes this very seriously. It’s why he lowered the flag to half-staff for three days, to remember these men and women.
I think, you know, Dr. [Deborah] Birx said it best when she said that in their estimates they had anywhere between 1.5 and 2.2 million people in the U.S. succumbing to the virus if we didn’t shut down the economy. The President made the very hard choice of shutting down the economy, so we avoided that extraordinary number.
Every — one death is too many. We never want to see a single individual lose their life. But that being said, to be under, significantly, that high mark shows that the President did everything in his power and helped to make this number as low as humanly possible.
You know, in a typical year 120,000 people die of suicide and drug overdose. That’s in a typical year. And doctors have said, when you shut down an economy for an extended period of time, that number gets greater. People don’t show up for their cancer diagnoses. There is a litany of results when you close down an economy. But closing down the economy for this amount of time kept us far below the 2.2 million number.
As we start to reopen, we keep in mind the people who are missing their screening appointments, the people who are not — who are succumbing to suicide and drug overdose because of economic hardship. This President made the right choice. It was a delicate balance, and he did it exactly as he should, guided by data, and we are far below 2.2 million dead Americans because of the actions of President Trump.
Her response should have been to the protection detail: take him out. Bang Bang. Ok I guess that is one more so next question.
I’m glad the author mentioned that imbecile, Neil Ferguson. That Boris Johnson or anyone else would have listened to this moron is astounding. He has an impressive track record of being wrong about absolutely everything, much like Biden on foreign policy. And everything else. All of Ferguson’s predictions have been complete fails.
He is, indeed, the jackass who invented the lockdown which, in addition to making us sicker, created the horrible ”Deaths of Despair”, which will outnumber the WuFlu deaths once we finally get accurate counts. If we ever do.
Of course, there is a punchline. Just a few weeks ago, Dr Lockdown got himself caught breaking his beloved quarantine. At least he had an essential purpose: visiting with his married girlfriend.
I never thought I would get over the pain of losing Sarah Sanders, but, this is really helping.
Something magical happens when the slicing and dicing is done by a beautiful woman.
Kayleigh is awesome. But this story is really weird. It starts with how well Kayleigh handled the very slanted and inappropriate questioning. But then it pivoted to how the President is using the very high initial Covid death estimates as a shield while the author of such estimates was run out of town for incompetence. This non sequitur implies that the President and his administration were duped. Which is not the case.
2.2 Million deaths is anecdotal. We don’t know, and can’t know. Plus a good majority of the people who got sick and died were staying inside and locking themselves down.
But then it pivoted to how the President is using the very high initial Covid death estimates as a shield while the author of such estimates was run out of town for incompetence.He's not using it as a shield. What are the people that believed the 2.2 million going to do? Call him a liar (as you are)?
The only fool in this situation is you.
I have a question about this remark made by Kayleigh:
“You know, in a typical year 120,000 people die of suicide and drug overdose.”
Where can we verify this figures? This seems excessive.
Buzz off. You clearly can’t read. Get it together before you start the gratuitous ad hominem attacks.
I had the same observation. I was left with the question: what is your actual point with this piece?
It’s ENGLISH! My point is: I was criticizing the author for saying that the Trump administration was using the high estimate as a shield. I think that is bogus 20/20 hindsight Monday morning quarterbacking and an unfair logical fallacy.
I wrote: “But then it pivoted to how the President is using the very high initial Covid death estimates as a shield while the author of such estimates was run out of town for incompetence. This non sequitur implies that the President and his administration were duped. Which is not the case.”
I stand by my opinion that the author writes as if the administration was duped, i.e. FOOLED. They were not FOOLED.
They made the best decisions possible given the pace of the pandemic and the meager information that existed AT THE TIME. It’s unfair to mount any criticism that implies or states that the administration is using the “look-back” as a shield against the press. I think that is offensive and unfair. And I think history will treat the Trump administration well regarding its handling of the pandemic.
I think the major point here is that Kayeigh is using the press’ own fearmongering against them. They can either admit that the 2 Million number was a lie, or concede that the Trump Administration has saved 2 Millions lives.
The average CNN/MSNBC watcher doesn’t know anything about Neil Ferguson.
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