Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com's love of pro-Trump stenography bit it back, prompting some furious back-pedaling. An anonym ously written June 21 article served up a stenographic account from President Trump's rally in Tulsa the previous day:
During his rally in Tulsa, Okla., on Saturday night, President Donald Trump discussed his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and said that he had “said to my people: Slow the testing down please.”
“We saved hundreds of thousands of lives and all we do is get hit on like we’re terrible,” said Trump.
“And what we’ve done with the ventilators, and with the medical equipment, and with testing—You know, testing is a double-edged sword,” he said.
“We’ve tested now 25 million people. It’s probably 20 million people more than anyone else,” Trump said. Germany’s done a lot. South Korea’s done a lot. They call me, they say: The job your doing—
“Here’s the bad part. When you test, when you do testing to that extent you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases,” Trump said.
“So, I said to my people: Slow the testing down, please,” Trump said.
“They test and they test,” he said. “We had tests of people who don’t know what’s going on. We got tests. We got another one over here. The young man’s ten years old. He’s got the sniffles. He’ll recover in about 10 minutes. That’s a case. Add up to it. That’s a case. That’s a case.”
This anonymous writer didn't seem to be aware that Trump was effectively admitting that Trump was slowing down testing to artificially keep coronavirus numbers down. So it was damage-control time -- which CNS is all too familiar with -- and who better to do that than CNS' top Trump stenographer, Melanie Arter:
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said President Donald Trump did not actually tell officials to slow down testing for the coronavirus.
His comment was made jest in an effort to expose how the media ignores the fact that there are more COVID-19 cases in the U.S., because “we have more testing.”
[...]
When asked what he meant by saying that he told his people to slow down on testing, the press secretary said, “The president was trying to expose what the media oftentimes does is they ignore the fact that the United States has more cases because we have more testing. We are leading the world in testing, and he was pointing that out that it's a fact that the media regularly ignores.
“It was a comment made that he made in jest. It’s a comment that he made in passing, specifically with regard to the media coverage and pointing out the fact that the media never acknowledges that we have more cases because when you test more people. You find more cases,” the press secretary said.
When asked whether it was appropriate to joke about coronavirus considering that 120,000 people have died, McEnany said the president was not joking about coronavirus.”
“I just said he was joking about the media and their failure to understand the fact that when you test more you also find more cases,” the press secretary said.
Thus, the narrative that Trump was joking became fact,despite the fact that there are no actual facts backing up -- indeed, the very same day that McEnany insisting that this was merely "in jest," Trump declared when asked about his statements: "I don't kid. Let me just tell you. Let me make that clear."
CNS' Arter devoted an article to that, in which she downplayed the "I don't kid" remark and highlighted his complaint that "the more COVID-19 testing that the United States does the more cases it will reveal" and his whining that "we have never been credited" for the amount of testing that has been done.
But Tim Graham of CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, didn't note any of that in his April 24 column, instead playing whataboutism by attacking CNN for criticizing Trump's "joke" -- an assessment Graham accepted without question, though he did have the sense to admit that it was "distasteful" -- because it was just as "distasteful" for CNN's Chris Cuomo to have "jokey interivews" with his brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, including one where "Chris decided to mock the size of his brother's nostrils by unveiling a series of ever-larger Q-Tips (or test swabs) and cracked his brother up."
Graham failed to note that was at least a clear, unambiguous attempt at humor, while the only evidence Graham has that Trump was joking is McEnany telling us after the fact that it was. And he accepted it as fact anyway.
UPDATE: After the MRC tried to retcon Trump's remark as a joke, it mocked Joe Biden for a joke it decided had fallen flat. Susan Jones wrote in a July 1 article:
Striding to the podium for his first news conference in three months, former Vice President Joe Biden opened with what he apparently meant as a joke:
"I'm a few minutes late," he told the (non) crowd:
"This is my polling place. I was trying to vote early, but I couldn't find it. (No audible laughter).
There was no audible laughter after Trump's "in juest" line either, but CNS didn't tell you that.
