But they are "the enemy of the people" figuratively speaking. They lie _all the time_, they're routinely caught and called out, and they continue to lie. The only two journalists that I know of who point out this sorry state of affairs are Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald. Neither is a fan of Trump in the least. Everyone else is perfectly OK with it. Far fewer people trust the press than the president.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/08/18/rasmussen...

They are supposed to inform. Instead, most of the time, they push disinformation to fit a predefined agenda. Jeff Zucker literally tells CNN talking heads what to say in his 9AM meeting. This is not "free press". This is a fucking disgrace, and it is actively harmful to "the people", especially when there's a crisis.

Let me give you an example: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/23/health/arizona-coronavirus-ch.... Unless you read the article carefully, you will get the impression that the man medicated himself with the actual chloroquine pills. This is NOT what happened: he ate god damn aquarium cleaner by the spoonful.

The front page of CNN is FULL of this bullshit. Literally all of the liberal outlets reprint these stories _knowing_ they are fake or misleading (just serarch Google for "chloroquine" and see for yourself, today - it'll be full of the same dude who ingested aquarium cleaner). And that's before we even mention lying by omission, which also happens all the time.

#1: in context is a clearly forward looking statement, since the text surrounding it speaks of significant testing capacity coming online in the near future. Which it did. Currently labs in e.g. WA (original epicenter of the infection) are operating under capacity: https://twitter.com/UWVirology/status/1241953101076037632. NY is still challenging, but ramped up tremendously since then. I mean, you can armchair quarterback all you want, but those are facts. Capacity was promised, capacity is being delivered.

#2. Yeah, I will concede that this one wasn't the best wording. That's how he deals with clearly partisan hacks in the audience. If you think anybody in his opposition would publicly accept blame for _anything_ you're sorely mistaken. Do I need to remind you what the Congress has spent the entire January and half the February on?

#3. We've been over this.

#4. He's right, they are doing whatever they can to freak people out as much as possible, whether or not there's a reason to freak out. The risk was low to the average American at the time, and at below 150 cases per million it remains so even now. Moreover, if you conservatively (by which I mean all the currently active cases there end in a fatality, which is unlikely) extrapolate S. Korea numbers to 7x the population, you'll end up with fewer than 50K deaths. We could realistically end up in that situation, given that we have a comparable level of medical care, and given that Korea is perhaps the only country for which extensive, reliable test data is available.

#5. He's right. There's a ton of fake news, even from previously reputable sources. So much so in fact, that people are already writing papers about this: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/eci.13222

#6. This is from Jan 22. First case in the US was identified just 3 days before: https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191. It did at the time seem that this could be "under control", especially considering that he was planning to shut down flights just 9 days later (something he was called a "racist" for at the time). You can say it ain't so with the benefit of the hindsight, but I bet you didn't think of this much in January, and if I told you several states would be in full lockdown, you wouldn't believe me.

7. In terms of the number of infections per million, the level of response, and the number of fatalities, we are in a "great" shape compared to most other places, including Korea, which is widely acknowledged to be a "success" as far as response measures and containment go. One thing we did fuck up is testing. That's being fixed as quickly as humanly possible: https://www.politico.com/interactives/2020/coronavirus-testi...

8. Meh. Weak sauce.

Anything else?

Why (from his point of view) would it be either/or? The latter claim could overlap with or imply the former. In principle, it doesn't have to, but saying the response was adequate certainly doesn't imply that liberals were correct about the magnitude of the threat.