IS CORONAVIRUS A HOAX?

Powerline ^ | FEBRUARY 29, 2020 | JOHN HINDERAKER

[Hojczyk]

Democratic Party media are claiming that last night in South Carolina, President Trump said that the coronavirus epidemic is a hoax. Politico headlines

:Did Trump actually say the corona virus is a hoax? Of course not. The claim is idiotic. If the president thought the virus is a hoax, why did he do a press conference on it last week, along with various medical personnel? And why did he ban travel to China at the beginning of the outbreak?

This is what Trump actually said in South Carolina, according to the New York Post:

President Trump jeered Democrats Friday night for criticizing his response to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, saying that it was a “new hoax” after a failed attempt to remove him from office over Ukraine.

“They tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia — that didn’t work out too well,” Trump told a cheering crowd in South Carolina. “They tried the impeachment hoax. That was a perfect conversation.”

“And this is the new hoax,” Trump declared. *** “Let’s get this right: A virus starts in China, makes its way into various countries all around the world, doesn’t spread widely at all in the United States because of the early actions that myself and my administration took against a lot of other wishes. And the Democrats’ single talking point and you see it is that it’s Donald Trump’s fault,” he said.

The hoax, obviously, is the Democrats’ unfounded criticism of the Trump administration. Never in American history have we seen such nakedly dishonest criticism of anyone in public life.

[Dan Cooper]

But it was careless of Trump to say hoax in a context where the media was inevitably going to twist it.

Trump does this all the time because he's not trying to futilely court the media, he giving them the rope to hang themselves. He's never going to get fair media coverage, but by saying stuff like this he gets the media to show how deranged and untrustworthy they are.

[Wayne07]

You are right, and it is a tactic that has worked well for Trump, especially when talking about rivals, or political issues. This is much more sensitive and personal to a lot of regular citizens. Even if you believe this only a flu, or less than a flu, there may be hundreds or thousands of deaths before the election. When a commercial drops with the body count, and Trump saying it is a hoax over the top, it is gonna hurt.

[arthurus]

Outside of China I don’t think it is going to turn out to be very bad. In China it is far worse than it would be elsewhere because of the weakened immune systems resulting from living in a very polluted atmosphere and because of personal hygiene being atrocious. That said It seems to me that the Chinese government reacted as it did because they knew what they were trying to create in that lab and they expected something like a Plague to result.