Of all the tonal shifts you are seeing from the liberal media now that Joe Biden is president, the abrupt change from "everything is awful" to "everything is awesome" could be most obvious on CNN. That could be seen on Thursday as Anderson Cooper and his guests raved over Biden's COVID plan. It's "factual," "very honest, "very evidence-based."
AC 360 host Cooper joined with chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, former Planned Parenthood President Leana Wen, and chief political analyst Gloria Borger to shower praise on Biden’s COVID plan and to take shots at Trump’s handling of the pandemic. Cooper began the state propaganda by applauding Biden’s announcement of his plan to combat COVID as a “clear break from the past.”
In contrast, Cooper believes that Trump does not care about Americans who have died from COVID, but that’s just because he’s an objective journalist!
Gupta could barely hide his enthusiasm and jumped in to gush over the COVID briefing for being “very factual” and “very honest”:
It was very factual. It was very honest. It was very evidence-based so all of that stood out to me, Anderson. It was very, you know, frankly very different than what we'd heard for quite some time now.
Gupta used quite a different tone when addressing Trump’s attempts to fight the virus. Gupta has alleged that Trump’s “plan” for the virus was to let millions of Americans die, labeled Trump making a joke about testing at a rally “nearly criminal,” and claimed that Trump was intentionally withholding testing. Gupta seems more interested in being a snarky hack than the pandemic.
Wen, who is the former head of Planned Parenthood, a fact that CNN bizarrely hides whenever she comes on air, raved about Biden’s plan and took a gratuitous shot at Trump’s COVID plan:
I really applaud President Biden for having this comprehensive plan. I mean, we've been waiting a year for the Trump administration to lay out a comprehensive plan so I'm glad that there is one.
While Trump was president, Wen alleged that Trump was going to “let millions of people die” just because he considered herd immunity. It is doubtful that she will ever make nasty statements such as that about Biden’s plans for COVID, no matter what the plans are.
Borger excused Biden snapping at a reporter and promised that Biden will “surpass” expectations for how he handles COVID:
When President Biden was asked about it today, the beginning of that quote where you said it's a start was, "Gimme a break. It's a start." He got a little testy about it, and they don't want to fail. They cannot fail. So they want to -- they don't want to overpromise. We had an administration just recently which was full of overpromises. This is going to go away in 15 days, et cetera, et cetera. I don't have to say the whole list. They need to succeed in this. This is their most important job right now. So this is what they promised early on, they're going to stick to it, and I think they know they're going to surpass it.
Funny, whenever Trump “got a little testy” with a reporter it was a danger to democracy according to CNN.
Cooper and Berger then enthused about how Anthony Fauci has been “liberated” by the Biden administration because it believes “in science,” in contrast to the “terrifying” Trump administration’s handling of the virus:
COOPER: You know, Gloria, Dr. Fauci obviously stayed on from the other administration. What is your take on -- on his sort of talk about being liberated?
BORGER: I think it's obvious from his face and his demeanor that he feels liberated. But here is my favorite part of what he said today. He said "One of the things new with this administration is if you don't know the answer, you don't guess. Just say you don't know the answer." So he is saying it's okay, because we believe in science and sometimes with this kind of a -- a disease, we're just finding things out as we go along, and the implication there was, of course, that there was a lot of guessing going on in the previous administration.
COOPER: Which is, I mean, terrifying.
Now that Biden is in office, CNN has fully embraced its role as state run media.
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Read the full December 21st transcript here. Click "expand" to read more.
Anderson Cooper 360
1/21/21
8:07:11 PM
ANDERSON COOPER: So today was clearly a break from the past when it comes to the pandemic. The question, though, will it be enough of a break? Is it sufficient to the moment that we are facing? What about the new strains and the threat they pose and will Republican lawmakers, some of whom push for bigger federal relief checks just a few weeks ago now find ways to change their tune now that there's a Democratic president and asking for it. Joining us CNN medical analyst, er doc and former Baltimore health commissioner Dr. Leana Wen. Also, CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta and CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger. Sanjay, today the first COVID briefing since November 19th which is pretty incredible. In terms of the science behind the new administration's plan, what stands out?
SANJAY GUPTA (CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT): Well, you know, several things stood out. I mean, we first saw President Biden talking specifically about all the various specifics -- specific plans that would come about as a result of this sort of whole of government approach. You know, we -- we heard this whole of government terminology used quite a bit by the last administration, but today, as I was listening to him, it really struck me. FEMA is going to really deal with setting up 100 community vaccination centers in the next month. CDC is going to focus on getting pharmacies to start vaccinating. HHS is going to work on getting more people to actually be the vaccinators, actually pushing the syringes into people's arms. So really, you know, relying on -- on, you know, all -- all the capabilities of the government and then Dr. Fauci is -- is at the press briefing as you mentioned, we hadn't seen him in -- in two months at one of the briefings and he talks about the fact that here are the trends. Here's what we can expect over the next several weeks. Are the variants going to be responsive to the vaccines? If so, why? If so -- not, why not? It was -- it was very factual. It was very honest. It was very evidence-based so all of that stood out to me, Anderson. It was very, you know, frankly very different than what we'd heard for -- for quite some time now.
COOPER: Dr. Wen, when a reporter asked President Biden if 100 million vaccine doses in 100 days which is his proposal, was enough, he responded quote "It's a good start." Is it a good start? Is it enough?
LEANA WEN (CNN MEDICAL ANALYST; EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIAN; FORMER BALTIMORE HEALTH COMMISSIONER): Well, it's a start. I don't think it's a good start, though and that's because we're actually already at that number, 100 million in 100 days sound like a lot but that's a million vaccinations done a day, which is what we are doing right now, and so that's not exactly a very aspirational goal, especially as we are now going to be expanding to so many different vaccination sites and having vaccinators as Sanjay was saying and enlisting community pharmacies and -- and health centers. Actually, at the rate of a million vaccinations a day, we're not going to be able to reach herd immunity to vaccinate let’s say, 80% of the American people on two shots for those individuals, we’re not going to be able to reach herd immunity until June of 2022. That’s not a moonshot and I -- I really applaud President Biden for having this comprehensive plan. I mean, we've been waiting a year for the Trump administration to lay out a comprehensive plan so I'm glad that there is one, one day into the presidency but I think it need to be a lot bolder.
COOPER: Gloria, I mean, CNN analysis found I think it was 1.6 million flu vaccines a day were distributed this past October so the capability is there for more. Do you think the President is under promising so if they get better results, then it seems like they've overachieved?
GLORIA BORGER (CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST): I do. I think that's exactly what they're doing. Is -- when President Biden was asked about it today, the beginning of that quote where you said it's a start was, "Gimme a break. It's a start." He got a -- got a little testy about it, and they don't want to fail. They cannot fail. So they want to -- they don't want to overpromise. We had an administration just recently which was full of overpromises. This is -- this is going to go away in 15 days, et cetera, et cetera. I don't have to say the whole list. They need to succeed in this. This is their most important job right now. So this is what they promised early on, they're going to stick to it, and I think they know they're going to surpass it, but they don't want to fail.
COOPER: Sanjay, Dr. Fauci said today that there are alternative plans to alter the vaccine if needed to deal with these variants. How can the country improve sequencing to learn how many cases in the UK, the South Africa, and the Brazilian variants are here?
GUPTA: Well, we -- we really haven't been looking much for this. And what that -- what that means is you’re looking at the virus, you're sequencing it, you're basically saying -- seeing if -- if the virus is changing, if -- if there are more mutations. If so, where are those mutations and would the antibodies that are created either because of vaccine or because of someone becoming infected, will they be able to -- to combat these variants. We -- we just haven't been looking. We do about 0.3% of the sequencing right now, compared to 5% roughly in the uk. We could probably easily double that by -- by developing these private/public partnerships. A lot of it’s being done by the private sector right now. So, simply bringing on some of these public labs would make a big difference. But one thing I want to point out, Dr. Fauci also said we can show these -- this graphic. But Dr. Fauci also said that he believes that the current vaccines will be effective against these variants but it's also important to point out that if the transmissibility is 50% higher for example and that -- that sort of carries forth over a month, the 50% more contagious, that's the right side of your screen, would lead to nearly 11.5 times more deaths compared to whether it's 50% more deadly, that would lead to 1.5 times more deaths. I hope that makes sense. The point being that if it's very contagious, it will obviously spread more easily. It will become the dominant strain and people who are vulnerable will become more likely to become infected. You know, right now you have these encounters with people even if you're being careful, you may let your guard down, take your mask down, have a closer encounter than you probably otherwise would. You can't do that with these contagious strains and I think that's the point he was really making.
COOPER: Dr. -- Dr. Wen, I mean, are the vaccines -- do they work against these more contagious strains?
WEN: Based on the studies that have been done so far, it looks like they do work, although I will say that there are some preliminary studies that show that maybe some of these new strains like the South African variant, the Brazilian variant, there may be less efficacy with the vaccine. We don't know for certain, though, and I think this really underscores the point that Sanjay was making about really this race against time that we have at this point. The CDC has this really shocking projection that the UK variant could become the dominant variant in the U.S. by March, which means that we don't have a lot of time to get a lot of people vaccinated very quickly and -- and by the way, we also have to be suppressing the level of viral spread because the more there's viral spread, the more it replicates, the more it could mutate and so we -- we are in a race against time here.
COOPER: You know, Gloria, Dr. Fauci obviously stayed on from the other administration. What is your take on -- on his sort of talk about being liberated?
BORGER: I -- I think it's obvious from his face and his demeanor that he feels liberated. But here is my favorite part of what he said today. He said "One of the things new with this administration is if you don't know the answer, you don't guess. Just say you don't know the answer." So he is saying it's okay, because we believe in science and sometimes with this kind of a -- a disease, we're just finding things out as we go along, and the implication there was, of course, that there was a lot of guessing going on in the previous administration.
COOPER: Which is, I mean, terrifying.
