CNN was up to no good early Tuesday night, dipping in and out of the White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing to peddle liberal punditry and Trump hate, even though some CNNers painfully conceded that President Trump was right about the World Health Organization’s China fetish. That didn’t apply to chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta, who called Trump “Baghdad Bob” on the virus and sided with communist China and the WHO because talking about them was “a distraction.”
Acosta bemoaned to Situation Room host Wolf Blitzer that the WHO was what the White House used as “a distraction” while Monday’s “was the news media.” He added that both served as “scapegoats” along with China, Democrats, governors, and the Obama administration as stand-ins for Trump himself. In other words, Acosta suggested Trump was why tens of thousands of Americans were dead.
The liberal hack continued on by making the Baghdad Bob analogy (click “expand”):
And Wolf, it just comes to mind what we saw yesterday during the briefing, that Monday meltdown, when he played that propaganda video in the white house briefing room, these briefings all together are --- are coming across like something out of Baghdad Bob. Baghdad Bob being the Iraqi military official who was claiming during the Iraq War that the United States was not making their way into the Iraqi capital. The President is sounding like very Baghdad Bob-like in the way that he’s assigning blame to everybody but himself. He is not taking any responsibility for this.
One of the things he just said a few moments ago about the World Health Organization. I’ll just read you the quote. He said it would have been so easy to be truthful. That was an exact quote from the President and yet this a President who, time and again throughout this crisis, has been playing fast and loose about the facts, lying about things, for example, saying that the Obama administration left the cupboards bare when they left office in 2017.
So, three thoughts on the amount of shameless psychobabble. First, no word on whether Acosta was still licking his wounds from his embarrassing display at the March 10 briefing.
Second, perhaps CNN isn't the right network to level any Baghdad Bob analogies considering CNN's despicable behavior covering for the Saddam Hussein regime while they held down a Baghdad bureau.
And third, it should be stated that this hot take came from the same network that downplayed the virus from January to early February because it conflicted with the impeachment trial and still held its annual upfront event to a crowd of hundreds on March 5.
During both the briefing and their break-ins, CNN’s Chyron Boy was in rare form (see photo), firing off lower thirds that bolstered Zuckerville’s greater emphasis on bashing Trump and thus loving both China and WHO (despite a critical segment here or there).
These doozies came on the heels of those fired off during Monday’s briefing, including the humdinger “Angry Trump turns briefing into propaganda session.”
Before Acosta’s brain cell-killing routine, Inside Politics host John King admitted on two separate occasions that Trump was correct to criticize the WHO for being “flat-footed” on the pandemic and far too trusting of China.
Of course, he still had to bash Trump by griping that this was not the time to do it. Rather, King opined that Trump made this “bold and controversial stroke…to turn the attention to somebody else.”
And right before Acosta, Dr. Sanjay Gupta appeared bleak when he couldn’t simply rip Trump, specifically agreeing with the President’s insistence that the WHO took China’s word about a lack of human-to-human transmission which, as we know, was a lie.
Later, King deflected blame for CNN fixating on Trump instead of fulfilling its most basic duty, which was to inform the public and keep it safe (click “expand”):
Nobody would hold the President accountable or not --- they wouldn't beat him about it if you acknowledge we didn't get this right at the beginning, we're getting it right now. It would be nice to see progress in testing, nice to hear more about this new stockpile. But instead we get the daily airing of grievances at the white house and things that we have to fact check that we have to correct which some of our viewers get mad at us, too, cause they want to know am I safe? Can I go back to work? When can I go back to work? Can I trust my governor and mayor when they tell me I can go back to work? Can I trust my boss when they say it's okay to come back to work?
I would urge everybody to listen to the president when he talks about these issues and then go online and listen not just to Governor Cuomo, who you see live on here almost every here, or Governor Newsom. People watching may say, oh, they’re both Democrats. Listen to Mike DeWine, listen to Charlie Baker, listen to Larry Hogan. Listen to how they talk about the complexity of this. We will have to take your temperature. We will have to spread people out in the workplace. We will have to get masks for everybody. You may go to a restaurant where half as many patrons, your menu may be disposable. We may do this in a couple places first and try it out for a week or two to see how it goes. The nuance, the detail, the complexity of the planning. Compare and contrast that to what you hear daily from the President.
To see the relevant transcript from CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on March 14, click “expand.”
CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer
April 14, 2020
6:30 p.m. EasternWOLF BLITZER: Alright, we’ll continue to monitor this briefing. We’ll will get back to the briefing shortly. I want to just get some analysis. John King is joining us right now. The President clearly is very much on the defensive again, strongly defending his record on ventilators and all sorts of other issues. The headline though is the U.S. halting funding for the World Health Organization.
JOHN KING: Wolf, the last thing I’m going to do is defend World Health Organization. It did have --- it was flat-footed here. CNN labeled coronavirus a pandemic before the World Health Organization. Think about that. CNN saw the data, saw the analysis and labeled it a pandemic before the World Health Organization. The World Health Organization did defend China and say they thought China was honest and forthcoming here. That part of what the President said is true. But even some critics of the W.H.O. say the worst time to cut off funding is in the middle of a pandemic. Save that beef, save this discussion about reform, for later. So, doing it now is a bold and controversial stroke by the President. But let’s step back, get to what this really is. This is another attempt by the President to turn the attention to somebody else.
(….)
6:36 p.m. Eastern
BLITZER: Sanjay, over the years, you’ve done a lot of important reporting on the World Health Organization. Give us a sense of what this means for the United States in the sense it is halting $400, $500 million in aid for the W.H.O.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA: Oh, I mean, this is significant, Wolf. You know, this is where some of their primary sources of funding realize and these were serious things the President brought up. You know, the basic headline was the World Health Organization whose charter is to provide public health information in a timely manner, did not do that and, you know, look there is some evidence of what he is saying to be true. I mean, you know, there was evidence, for example, like of what concerns you about a circulating virus, the fact you have a new virus that’s causing disease in humans, that’s a certain level of concern, the fact it is heading human to human is another level of concern. And it appears now, when you look at the data, Wolf, there is evidence of human to human transmission in China much earlier than they sorta let the rest of the world know. So, that part of it is significance. Of course, the President was attacking much of what China had been doing as well in saying the World Health Organization did not do their job in investigating that. I thought what I was surprised by was that he put a number on it. He said --- and I am not sure how he got the number, but there was a 20-fold increase of infections, he said, as a result of the World Health Organization acting late. Again, I am not sure how they arrived at that, but that is a significant, significant charge, Wolf, in terms of the impact of some of these late decisions by WHO.
BLITZER: Yeah, that’s very significant indeed. Jim Acosta is with us still. Our chief White House correspondent. Jim, the President had been hinting now for days he was about to make this announcement about halting all U.S. aid to the World Health Organization.
JIM ACOSTA: That's right, Wolf, and there was a briefing last week where he began to say he was halting funding for the World Health Organization and then he backpedaled away from that. So, obviously, they think they feel like they’ve come up with a distraction to use at today’s briefing. Yesterday, it was the news media. Today, it’s the WHO and if you go through the scapegoats that’s he’s blamed so far for this coronavirus pandemic, the WHO, members of the news media, Democrats in Congress, governors, he’s blamed China, he’s blamed the Obama administration, he’s blamed everybody but himself. And Wolf, it just comes to mind what we saw yesterday during the briefing, that Monday meltdown, when he played that propaganda video in the white house briefing room, these briefings all together are --- are coming across like something out of Baghdad Bob. Baghdad Bob being the Iraqi military official who was claiming during the Iraq War that the United States was not making their way into the Iraqi capital. The President is sounding like very Baghdad Bob-like in the way that he’s assigning blame to everybody but himself. He is not taking any responsibility for this. One of the things he just said a few moments ago about the World Health Organization. I’ll just read you the quote. He said it would have been so easy to be truthful. That was an exact quote from the President and yet this a President who, time and again throughout this crisis, has been playing fast and loose about the facts, lying about things, for example, saying that the Obama administration left the cupboards bare when they left office in 2017.
(….)
6:54 p.m. Eastern
KING: Nobody would hold the President accountable or not --- they wouldn't beat him about it if you acknowledge we didn't get this right at the beginning, we're getting it right now. It would be nice to see progress in testing, nice to hear more about this new stockpile. But instead we get the daily airing of grievances at the white house and things that we have to fact check that we have to correct which some of our viewers get mad at us, too, cause they want to know am I safe? Can I go back to work? When can I go back to work? Can I trust my governor and mayor when they tell me I can go back to work? Can I trust my boss when they say it's okay to come back to work? I would urge everybody to listen to the president when he talks about these issues and then go online and listen not just to Governor Cuomo, who you see live on here almost every here, or Governor Newsom. People watching may say, oh, they’re both Democrats. Listen to Mike DeWine, listen to Charlie Baker, listen to Larry Hogan. Listen to how they talk about the complexity of this. We will have to take your temperature. We will have to spread people out in the workplace. We will have to get masks for everybody. You may go to a restaurant where half as many patrons, your menu may be disposable. We may do this in a couple places first and try it out for a week or two to see how it goes. The nuance, the detail, the complexity of the planning. Compare and contrast that to what you hear daily from the President.