OPINION | This article contains commentary that reflects the author's opinion.
Daily Wire reported that Joe Scarborough, the host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” was pushing a narrative on Wednesday morning that President Trump reacted slowly to the coronavirus pandemic.
While a guest on the show, Dr. Zeke Emanuel, an oncologist and and Center for American Progress senior fellow, stated that “nobody could have seen this coming”, while commenting on the unprecedented numbers of people becoming infected and unfortunately dying from complications within weeks.
Scarborough rejected the statement and rebutted ““The fact is, everybody saw this coming,” and continued, “Everybody saw this coming in early January.”.
Scarborough had already presented a case against President Trump earlier in the show with how he believes the White House’s response to the pandemic developed, stating that the president “wasn’t hearing” the scientists who were warning him.
He also accused President Trump of being disconnected and believing that the pandemic would “magically” go away, not listing the incredible amount of action in the private sector and movement of federal government’s resources to regions facing particular hardships.
More of the commentary of President Trump by Joe Scarborough was covered by Daily Wire.
Before getting into the incorrect statements of Scarborough’s monologue, it should be noted that on January 27th, “Morning Joe” featured a medical expert that said Americans “don’t need to be overly concerned yet in the United States about the novel Coronavirus,” but should “keep our eyes open for the seasonal flu.” A clip of this segment was highlighted by Grabien founder Tom Elliott.
A search for “coronavirus” and MSNBC in early January brought up zero results. CNN began covering China’s “mysterious pneumonia outbreak” around January 9, though they were hardly raising an alarm back then. The same goes with NBC and ABC.
The Daily Wire first reported on the coronavirus on January 21, when China claimed a sixth person had died from the virus (due to China’s lying, it’s now unclear whether this number was accurate at the time). At the time, almost no one thought the virus would become a global pandemic, contrary to Scarborough’s claims.
A timeline compiled by the U.S. State Department showed few infections (according to probably inaccurate Chinese data) through November and December 2019 and that China was trying to squash news of the outbreak.
As to Scarborough’s other claims, he misrepresented Trump’s statements that were in line with what media outlets were reporting at the time. In hindsight, Trump was wrong, as were many, many other people, but that is how fast-moving news happens. Scarborough failed to mention Trump’s January 31 travel restrictions to and from China and instead claimed Trump called coverage of the coronavirus a hoax. Again, that is not what Trump said. The president said the Democrats’ claims that his administration wasn’t doing enough to combat the virus was the hoax.
President Trump has conducted briefings throughout the pandemic as it has developed, informing Americans about safety precautions and how the federal government is responding to regions that need assistance.
President Trump has resisted a rush to government coercion as he encouraged the private sector that possessed the capabilities to produce protective equipment and ventilators to choose to retool their manufacturing lines to help hospitals stock up on irreplaceable supplies.
