The media is desperate to attack and condemn Trump for the coronavirus at any cost, even if that means touting propaganda from a foreign government. This week, several networks have tried to deflect blame from China by insisting that Trump calling COVID-19 the “Chinese” or “Wuhan” flu was racist. MSNBC’s Brian Williams and his liberal panel late Wednesday night were even more blatant in their attempt to cover for Communist China, claiming that just by calling the virus by that name, Trump was endangering the country.
11th Hour Host Brian Wiliams began the segment playing the clip of two reporters grilling Trump on his “racist” terminology. The MSNBC panel looked aggravated, with Washington Post’s Philip Rucker shaking his head in disgust. Host Brian Williams asked panelist Ian Bremmer in frustration, “Ian, what are we doing here?”
The Time columnist and Eurasia group president was quick to bash Trump for deflecting “blame” for the virus, since he could no longer place it on "Obama and Biden”:
Well, President Trump hasn't referred to this as the Chinese flu until about two days ago. It links up with his policies in response to Coronavirus imploding and the markets imploding in the United States, and it made it harder for him to blame Obama, blame Biden. He needs someone to blame. And China's the proximate country.
Bremmer went on to admit that China was “responsible” for the original problem and coverup, something that his MSNBC colleagues wouldn’t say. Yet Bremmer was more eager to blame Trump, insisting this was in his hands now and he shouldn’t provoke China otherwise he was going to “start a cold war”:
“...[p]icking a fight with the Chinese, who feel vastly more confident today coming out of this crisis, than they did after 2008 is going to cause more economic damage…. the potential that we end up coming out of this coronavirus crisis and a cold war with the Chinese is becoming real,” Bremmer fretted.
Panelist Kimberly Atkins of Boston’s NPR station also complained Trump was “blaming China” for his own shortcomings in handling the virus. Williams went back to Bremmer, playing a clip of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explaining how China covered up the virus outbreak for months.
Instead of agreeing with this fact, the MSNBC journalist kept spinning for communists to trash Trump:
“The need to blame. The need to attribute troubles to another source,” Williams groaned, inviting Bremmer to bash President Trump again.
While Bremmer again admitted Trump was right about China being culpable, he couldn’t bring himself to expand on that. After all, this is MSNBC and trashing Trump is top priority. He ended the segment by inviting the public to blame the Trump administration for the pandemic:
Yes, we lost a month because China covered it up but we lost two months after that because the Trump administration was asleep at the switch and President Trump was spinning fantasies for the average American saying this wasn't a problem. It was like a miracle, it would go away. Also unconscionable. There is plenty of blame here to go around, Brian. And ultimately the Americans do have to -- if you want to put America first, we should also be blaming our own leadership first. That's really the kind of America first we need to see. We have to see leadership in our country to take care of our own people. And I see a lot of passing of the buck right now.
It’s analysis like this that makes you wonder who exactly is the media working for, again?
Read the relevant transcript, below:
The 11th Hour
MSNBC
3/18/20
[plays clip of reporters Wednesday accusing Trump of racism for calling virus, the ‘Chinese virus’. Panel looks visibly frustrated, some roll their eyes and shake their heads in frustration]
BRIAN WILLIAMS: Ian, what are we doing here?
IAN BREMMER: Well, President Trump hasn't referred to this as the Chinese flu until about two days ago. It links up with his policies in response to Coronavirus imploding and the markets imploding in the United States, and it made it harder for him to blame Obama, blame Biden. He needs someone to blame. And China's the proximate country.
And the problem with that of course is -- I mean, yes, it did indeed come from China originally, and furthermore the Chinese did indeed cover it up for the first month. So they are responsible. But on top of this massive market meltdown and economic shutdown we're seeing in the United States right now, picking a fight with the Chinese, who feel vastly more confident today coming out of this crisis, than they did after 2008 is going to cause more economic damage. And while it's politically expedient for Trump to do so in an electoral cycle, the likelihood that we end up in an economic fight with the Chinese where we pull out of the phase 1 trade deal, they're not buying the goods they promised to buy, and the Chinese are making gains in places like Europe, the Middle East where they're actually providing humanitarian medical aid, supplies, personnel, and the Americans are actually undermining the relations with those countries, the potential that we end up coming out of this coronavirus crisis and a cold war with the Chinese is becoming real. That's an additional shock right now that you really don't want as we face by far the worst economic crisis we've had in a long time.
WILLIAMS: Kim, I don't need to tell you they're using the big boy briefing room at the White House now after it was idle for a year. That creates an even louder daily megaphone for the White House briefing, especially when the president is part of it. Is the West Wing staff still convinced he is their best spokesperson?
KIMBERLY ATKINS: Well, he is convinced of that. And we've seen a lot of iterations since the coronavirus became a massive crisis. First it was the creation of that task force. And then Mike Pence was put out front. And he was the face of it, giving the daily briefings and leading them for a couple of days before the president came back and took control of the message. You can certainly tell in the White House that they feel the increased sense of urgency and they are responding as such. The president is still being the president. And as Ian said, doing things like blaming others, like blaming China but at the same time there's a real understanding that this is something massive, it is a bigger economic crisis, potentially bigger economic crisis than we saw in 2008 and that the White House needs to act both for -- because it's the White House and it's the head of the executive. But also politically it's an election year and that's certainly something on the president’s mind that he doesn’t want to be seen as the person who’s at fault if the response is not enough.
….
BRIAN WILLIAMS: Ian, on top of all of it I want to play you this. Here is our Secretary of State on Fox News.
MIKE POMPEO: The Chinese government knew about this risk, had identified it. They were the first to know, and they wasted valuable days at the front end, allowing hundreds of thousands of people to leave Wuhan, to go to places like Italy, that's now suffering so badly. They tried to suppress this information. You talked about the means by which they did it. Instead of trying to actually do the work to suppress the virus.
WILLIAMS: Ian, this speaks directly to what you were saying earlier. The need to blame. The need to attribute troubles to another source.
BREMMER: It's true. I mean, look, it is the fact that China is almost 20% of the world's economy right now. It was about 4% when SARS hit. All of the major American companies are massively
interlinked in terms of China's supply chain. And so as a consequence when you end up with more significant risks that come out of China we're going to be affected in a much more dramatic way.
Let's be very clear here. The mistakes made by China early, and they were intentional, by the Chinese government are unconscionable. They need to be redressed. And you know, we're going to get hurt. The Iranians, that was absolutely a response of the Chinese not being able to deal with this crisis and refusing to. The Europeans as well. But we still have to take responsibility for our own response. And the fact that Jack Ma, the wealthiest man in China, is offering the United States 500,000 test kits and we aren't able to produce them for ourselves? Yes, we lost a month because China covered it up but we lost two months after that because the Trump administration was asleep at the switch and President Trump was spinning fantasies for the average American saying this wasn't a problem. It was like a miracle, it would go away. Also unconscionable. There is plenty of blame here to go around, Brian. And ultimately the Americans do have to -- if you want to put America first, we should also be blaming our own leadership first. That's really the kind of America first we need to see. We have to see leadership in our country to take care of our own people. And I see a lot of passing of the buck right now.
WILLIAMS: Alright Ian, let’s take a half million test kits if offered.
