This Thursday afternoon, as Coronavirus deaths in the United States continued to climb towards 100,000 and beyond, President Donald Trump was focused on whining about television programming. Specifically, he took to Twitter with an angry rant about the supposedly negative coverage that he’s been facing from Fox, which traditionally has been a conservative stronghold. In reality, the network sometimes tries to simply ask basic clarification questions of the president’s allies, but even that sounds like it’s more than the president is willing to handle.
He could have tweeted, perhaps, a spotlight on the stories of some of the victims of the Coronavirus pandemic. He could have tweeted something about the way forward for the U.S. amidst the pandemic. Instead, he belted out an inane list of nicknames for Fox News hosts that he doesn’t particularly like.
We talk about coronavirus constantly & yet it *still* feels like we don’t talk nearly enough about how 90,000+ Americans have died in the last 3 months & that number (which is more than a number; it’s lives lost & hundreds of thousands of people grieving) will absolutely go up.
— Amanda Litman (@amandalitman) May 19, 2020
He posted:
‘Many will disagree, but @FoxNews is doing nothing to help Republicans, and me, get re-elected on November 3rd. Sure, there are some truly GREAT people on Fox, but you also have some real “garbage” littered all over the network, people like Dummy Juan Williams, Schumerite Chris Hahn, Richard Goodstein, Donna Brazile, Niel Cavuto, and many others. They repeat the worst of the Democrat speaking points, and lies. All of the good is totally nullified, and more. Net Result = BAD! CNN & MSDNC are all in for the Do Nothing Democrats! Fox WAS Great!’
Besides the fact that Trump’s characterization of Fox as somehow out to get him is ludicrously petty and disconnected from reality, why on earth does he think that Fox even should be trying to help Republicans get re-elected this November in the first place? Does he think that the network is a campaign arm of the GOP? Does he think that any media, not just Fox, should be supporting the people who are in charge? That’s mindless authoritarianism, at best.
It's incredible, we're in the middle of the biggest economic and health crisis this country has faced in a century, and the president's senior adviser is out here tweeting inspirational quotes she probably read on a novelty coffee mug. https://t.co/d9k4TJ7T4p
— Gary Legum (@GaryLegum) May 21, 2020
Trump has good reason to worry as the November elections approach. Polls consistently show him losing to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who leads on both the national level and that of individual swing states across the country, including many of the ones that Trump won in 2016.
WOW: New research from Columbia University finds if social distancing in U.S. "had been in place seven days earlier…the U.S. could have prevented 36,000 deaths through early May — about 40 percent of fatalities reported to date." Now If only Trump didn't think it was a "Hoax" https://t.co/SvxL5Vrcoy
— (((DeanObeidallah))) (@DeanObeidallah) May 21, 2020
Check out Twitter’s response below:
