On Tuesday’s New Day, CNN co-host John Berman brought on Miami Beach’s Democratic Mayor Dan Gelber to spread liberal propaganda about Florida's response to COVID-19. Throughout the segment, Berman bashed the state's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and attempted to make Gelber’s handling of the pandemic look better. Quite hypocritically, the anchor allowed Gelber to blame Florida’s spike in coronavirus cases on the GOP and did not question him participating in a crowded public Juneteenth celebration.
Berman began the partisan cheerleading by playing a clip of a hostile critic heckling DeSantis:
GOV. RON DESANTIS (R -FLORIDA): So I think the --
HECKLER: There are record breaking cases every day, and you are doing nothing!
DESANTIS: So, I think --
HECKLER: You are falsifying information and you are misleading the public. Over 4,000 people have died and you are blaming the protesters. You guys have no plan and you're doing nothing. Shame on you!
BERMAN: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis heckled by a protester in Miami for the coronavirus response there.
Attacking DeSantis is nothing new for Berman. He's repeatedly savaged the Republican, but refused to hold Democratic governors such as New York’s Andrew Cuomo accountable for their mismanagement of the virus. Cuomo issued an executive order which sent recovering patients to nursing homes and killed as many as 12,000 New Yorkers. Six of the top seven states in COVID deaths all have Democratic governors. Massachusetts, the other state, has a Republican governor, but it has a Democrat-dominated legislature. Florida has a larger population than any of these states and far fewer deaths, but Berman is interested in making Democrats look good and not facts.
Berman then allowed Gebler to selectively blame others for the Florida outbreak: "Well, it's pretty obvious what's happening and that is that people aren't respecting this virus, especially younger people. They're going out, they're having parties."
How about the millions of people out protesting? Of course, the media supports those protests, and thus have repeatedly downplayed or ignored the left-wing demonstrations spreading coronavirus. In fact, health officials from Miami have even admitted that the protests caused an increase in cases.
Speaking of such protests, if Berman wanted to be a journalist, he could have questioned Gelber about his involvement with a Juneteenth celebration and whether such celebrations could have spread the virus. But the virus must be a woke enough that it only infects people supporting local businesses, and not leftist protesters.
For his part, Gelber continued to slam Republicans:
Well, the problem is if you step back, there has been this constant attempt to downplay all of these issues as they present themselves. I mean, we had -- I mean, for crying out loud, we had the Vice President here last week telling us that our -- we're in a much better place. And then immediately, as if the virus had a heightened sense of irony and karma, we had the worst couple days in the history of the pandemic anywhere in the world, literally, in Florida.
Berman followed up with fear mongering: "What would it take for you to call for new stay at home orders in Miami Beach? What would the situation be and how far is it from where you are right now?"
Gelber declared that he may disobey the Governor and lock down the city.
CNN does not care about coronavirus facts that are inconvenient for the left. It will continue to exploit the crisis to cheerlead for Democrats and attack Republicans.
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Read the full July 14th transcript here:
CNN'a New Day
07/14/20
8:18:23 AM
[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]
GOV. RON DESANTIS (R - FLORIDA): So I think the --
HECKLER: There are record breaking cases every day, and you are doing nothing!
DESANTIS: So, I think --
HECKLER: You are falsifying information and you are misleading the public. Over 4,000 people have died and you are blaming the protesters. You guys have no plan and you're doing nothing. Shame on you!
[END VIDEO CLIP]
JOHN BERMAN: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis heckled by a protester in Miami for the coronavirus response there. This morning, we just learned that eight hospitals in Miami-Dade County have reached ICU capacity and have zero beds available. Joining me now is Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber. Mr. Mayor, thank you so much for being with us. I want to talk about ICU capacity in just a moment, but another statistic that jumped out to me this morning that is very concerning and this has to do with the elderly in Miami-Dade County. Jackson Health reports that the number of people 80 years old and older who have been admitted over the last two weeks has basically doubled. That's a 100 percent increase in over just two weeks, and yes, this recent surge fueled by young people but it does appear that now, we are seeing an impact on the elderly. What are your concerns here?
MAYOR DAN GELBER (D -MIAMI BEACH, FLORIDA): Well, it's pretty obvious what's happening and that is that people aren't respecting this virus, especially younger people. They're going out, they're having parties. They're -- they’re not exercising social distancing and, of course, they have family members who are older. And, you know, we just have too much virus in our community. We had over 3,000 cases in one day earlier this week, which is enormous in just our county. And so we just have too much virus. The -- the positivity percentage is something like 25 percent. So, there's too much in too many places and you cannot protect the people who need to be protected. And that's what you're seeing in our hospitals right now.
BERMAN: Yeah, because early on, a few weeks ago what we're hearing from Ron DeSantis and others are, it's just young people. It's just young people, and the implication there was they're not going to get as sick, this isn't as big of a concern. I'm not so sure that's as operative this morning.
GELBER: Well, the problem is if you step back, there has been this constant attempt to downplay all of these issues as they present themselves. I mean, we had -- I mean, for crying out loud, we had the Vice President here last week telling us that our -- we're in a much better place. And then immediately, as if the virus had a heightened sense of irony and karma, we had the worst couple days in the history of the pandemic anywhere in the world, literally, in Florida. So, you know, you can't keep telling people that everything is just fine and not to worry because this is not a -- a virus that responds to political speaking points. It's a virus that's going to do what it wants to and we have to -- we have to do what we need to.
BERMAN: So, let's talk about hospital capacity, 48 ICU hospitals in the entire state at capacity this morning, zero beds. Eight in Miami- Dade County. What are your concerns there?
GELBER: Well, the -- the problem is -- there's two problems. The first is we can -- we can shift beds from, you know, non-ICU to ICU, but it requires so much staffing, but we have to get the staffing. And I know the governor is trying to move professional health care staffing into Dade County so they -- and other places, so that they can really staff those beds. But, of course, the other problem is as you increase the census of COVID patients overall, we have over 2,000 in Miami-Dade alone right now. You know, hospitals when COVID wasn't around were doing pretty important things in the community. So how do they do those things for all of the non-COVID care, much of which is important and vital when your hospitals are filled with patients that need intensive care as well as just patients that are in the hospital which, you know, we hospitalize, you got to be pretty sick.
BERMAN: What would it take for you to call for new stay at home orders in Miami Beach? What would the situation be and how far is it from where you are right now?
GELBER: Well, I have been working with the county, as a lot of the mayors have. And -- and we could -- we -- we did -- we were the first city in the -- in the state to actually impose a shelter at home order in -- in my city. But what's happening now is we now have closed indoor dining. We have a 10:00 p.m. curfew. Our city has done a couple of other limitations, and we're trying to see if that can affect the curve because we really -- we really want to try to not have to shelter in place because of the economic activity problems. But -- but what's going to happen is if we cannot deliver health care to people, not simply COVID patients but non-COVID, if -- if all hospitals are incapable of providing care to the community, that's a hard stop for everybody. So, I suspect if in a week of or two, this is not changed in any way, then we're all going to do it. And -- and whether or not the governor wants us to or not, we'll do it. The county will do it. Lots of the cities will do it. It will just be a shelter in place again, but people can stop that, I believe, if they -- if they stop listening to people telling them that everything is fine and they start treating this seriously, wearing their masks and doing all of the other things that all the doctors tell them to.
