Where to begin? Given just how off-the-wall crazy the Tuesday handoff between Cuomo PrimeTime and CNN Tonight was, it’s actually a really difficult question to answer. Between Don Lemon’s complaint that President Trump didn’t start vaccine research in January and Chris “Fredo” Cuomo bashing Republicans as a “sickness” spreading division, the idea that the former was demanding “we all need to live in reality” boggled the functioning mind.
After at one point declaring “we all need to live in reality,” Lemon went on to lament how America wasn’t the first to get the vaccine and blamed it on Trump. According to Lemon, the administration should have started the vaccine development process in January, before scientists obtained the virus’s cracked genome necessary for the making of a vaccine:
Yes, Operation Warp Speed -- t happened fast. But imagine if in January, when those recordings from Bob Woodward, if we had known, if they had acted then. Imagine how fast it would have been?
(…)
So, I'm optimistic. It would’ve been great. I was hoping America would get it’s first dose by now. It would have been great to see Americans up there getting their first doses first. But we start where we start, begin where we begin. And let's hope we have enough doses. We get enough people to buy-in.
After Fredo proclaimed that “we don’t” have enough of the vaccine, Lemon rambled on about how President-elect Biden was going to swoop in and save the day.
“Yes, but I've spoken to people who said they can still rejigger. They can still figure out where to get more. There are other people who are making vaccines,” he said. “There's AstraZeneca, so on and so forth. So there's still time for the Biden folks to get in there to rejigger and try to get more doses from other places.”
Of course, Lemon’s suggestion was that Trump didn’t purchase any of those vaccines. But on Monday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar busted that lie wide open.
In an interview with NBC, Azar explained the U.S. could still purchase more of the Pfizer vaccine, plus they had ordered 600 million doses over six different makers. That’s not to mention that no one knew, until recently, who would be the first to bring a vaccine to market or if any would be effective. And as our friend Ryan Saavedra at The Daily Wire noted on Twitter, CNN reported on January 20 a "Vaccine for new Chinese coronavirus in the works" from the National Institutes of Heath.
From there, Cuomo chimed in by continuing to bash only Senate Republicans for the lack of a coronavirus relief package, even though Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had refused to negotiate or compromise for months.
And according to Cuomo, who (as well as Lemon) backs the leftist domestic terrorist group Antifa, the Republicans were a “sickness” that was “doubling down on the division.” He also claimed they thought the pandemic was a hoax:
You know, look, Trump is the fever. He is not the political sickness. These ReTrumplicans, as I call them, in Congress. They’re in a box, Don. Because they are doubling down on the division. “We're not helping they will. We're not helping blue states. We’re not going to hand out this money. We don’t believe any of this. COVID’s not even real. The election’s not real. Nothing’s real.”
He said that, but yet the GOP were the ones spreading disunity. Your head probably hurts from trying to follow that logic. Go take something for that and come back to finish reading.
“That's what happens when you radicalize people. When you radicalize as the state TV has done, when you have radicalized your viewers. They need more,” Lemon proclaimed as he started tapping his arm with his fingers, gesturing like he was about to shoot up on heroin. “They got to go back. It’s got to be pure. If you’re not giving them the pure stuff, if you’re not getting more radical and more radical and more radical they’re not going to tune in.”
The duo then spent some time going back and forth further discussing how Fox News was just like a drug dealer.
But the right was spreading division. This is … The CNN Zone.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
CNN Tonight
December 8, 2020
10:01:23 p.m. Eastern(…)
DON LEMON: This is why every single night I say, “How much more do we have to take?” And I scream, “We all need to live in reality.”
Yes, Operation Warp Speed -- t happened fast. But imagine if in January, when those recordings from Bob Woodward, if we had known, if they had acted then. Imagine how fast it would have been?
I'm going to remain optimistic, glass half fulfill. But being a realist, and being a journalist, I have to – I’ve go to wonder how much further ahead we would have been if we had more buy-in if the leader of the free world had said, “Hey, this is serious, it is airborne, we need to do this, we need to do that, what have you.” And as the science changed and evolved, that he would have changed is that evolved as well.
Early on, masks, they believe they didn't have -- they didn't have much of an effect. Then a little bit later on they realized, well, there is some benefit to wearing it. So, as the science evolved, the scientists evolved. But guess who never did evolve?
So, I'm optimistic. It would’ve been great. I was hoping America would get it’s first dose by now. It would have been great to see Americans up there getting their first doses first. But we start where we start, begin where we begin. And let's hope we have enough doses. We get enough people to buy-in.
CHRIS CUOMO: We don't. You can't, hope in that case --
LEMON: Yes, but I've spoken to people who said they can still rejigger. They can still figure out where to get more. There are other people who are making vaccines. There's AstraZeneca, so on and so forth. So there's still time for the Biden folks to get in there to rejigger and try to get more doses from other places.
[Cuomo starts making a hand gesture for money]
But – Yes, it’s going to take money. But we've got money. This is America.
CUOMO: They have money but they have, they have power of the purse, they have to allocate it, and then it has to be effectively spent. Remember, that last relief bill. Of this 900 billion, over 400 billion of it is money from the last bill that they never spent, Don.
You know, look, Trump is the fever. He is not the political sickness. These ReTrumplicans, as I call them, in Congress. They’re in a box, Don. Because they are doubling down on the division. “We're not helping they will. We're not helping blue states. We’re not going to hand out this money. We don’t believe any of this. COVID’s not even real. The election’s not real. Nothing’s real.”
So, where’s their posture to compromise? You know, what they’re feeding that base is we'll fight everything at every turn because the enemy is within.
LEMON: That's what happens when you radicalize people. When you radicalize as the state TV has done, when you have radicalized your viewers. They need more.
[Lemon starts tapping fingers on his arm]
They got to go back. It’s got to be pure. If you’re not giving them the pure stuff, if you’re not getting more radical and more radical and more radical--
CUOMO: That’s right.
LEMON: -- they’re not going to tune in.
CUOMO: Hence the Newsmax situation.
LEMON: Right.
(…)
