When it comes to global pandemics and health catastrophes, it is imperative that the facts of the matter remain at the forefront, and that we don’t find ourselves bogged down in our less scrupulous opinions.
Of course, when you apply the tinted lens of politics to these sorts of cataclysms, there is no telling what the veracity of the information you’ll receive will be.
In Washington this week we observed just such a conundrum, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Donald Trump squaring off against one another over the spread of coronavirus COVID-19 in the United States.
From a Wednesday press conference:
A reporter asked, “What is your response to Speaker Pelosi, who said earlier today you don’t know what you’re talking about about the coronavirus? I’m also wondering if you’d want to address critics who say you can’t be trusted about what your administration is saying?”
Trump said, “I think Speaker Pelosi is incompetent. She lost the Congress once. I think she’s going to lose it again. She lifted my poll numbers up 10 points. I never thought i would see that so quickly and so easily. I’m leading everybody. We’re doing great. I don’t want to do it that way. It’s almost unfair if you think about it. But I think she’s incompetent and I think she’s not thinking about the country. Instead of making a statement like that where I’ve been beating her routinely at everything, instead of making a statement like that, she should be saying we have to work together because we have a big problem potentially, and maybe it’s going to be a very little problem. I hope that it’s going to be a very little problem, but we have to work together. Instead, she wants to do the same thing with Crying Chuck Schumer. He goes out and says the president only asks for $2.5 million. He should have $8.5 billion. This is the first time I’ve ever been told we should take more. Usually, it’s we have to take less. We should be working together. He shouldn’t be making statements like that because it’s so bad for the country.”
He continued, “Nancy Pelosi, she should go back to her district, cleaned it up.”
He added, “I’m just saying, we should all be working together. She’s trying to create a panic, and there’s no reason to panic because we have done so good.”
Pelosi had hours earlier attempted to blame a hypothetical, future outbreak of the novel coronavirus on President Trump’s supposed inaction.
