When Trump And Fox News Love Each Other Very Much, Sometimes They Lie Down Together And ...
This is a disgusting analogy, we are not sorry.
Yesterday was weird. (Evergreen statement!)
Donald Trump HEREBY ANNOUNCED early in the morning on Twitter that he was very mad at the CDC's recommendations for how schools across America should handle the question of reopening. This came after a Tuesday event when he was very insistent that the kids must go back to school NOW RIGHT NOW, and if a few kindergarten teachers keel over dead, well, they probably forgot to take their hydroxychloroquine that morning.
And then in the afternoon, unbelievably but not unbelievably, the CDC announced through Mike Pence — sure, why not! — that it would be changing its school reopening recs, to lighten them up and make sure the schools don't do anything CRAZY like stay closed, which could hurt Trump's chances at re-election. We guess the only thing worse than a kid dying of coronavirus is a kid who dies of coronavirus in a world where Donald Trump is not president.
It got us to wonderin', as we are wont to do, what might have happened in the 24 hours leading up to Pence's announcement and the CDC's abrupt change. Did the president read a new scholarly article that strongly suggested the CDC was overreacting? Yes, that's what happened, the president read something .
Or maybe he just watched a shitload of Fox News, like he always does.
Media Matters, as usual, was on the case, and collected a bunch of quotes and videos that we just fuckin' bet entered the president's stupid earholes Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. And because his earholes are indeed so very stupid, that Fox News bullshit probably did change the course of CDC policy. What a failed state we live in.
Here's Tucker, saying these so-called school restrictions are just WEIRD.
TUCKER CARLSON: Many schools that do plan to reopen will do so under a series of restrictions that have no basis of any kind in science. It's a kind of bizarre health theater. Students will be kept six feet apart, everyone will have to wear a mask, class size will be limited and in some there will be scheduled bathroom breaks, et cetera, et cetera.
Ugh, that's just DUMB. Hey, Donald Trump, don't you think that's just DUMB? Probably, since he was spending his all-day executive time tweeting it.
Tucker Carlson used to believe in science about coronavirus, for like a hot second. Now he lies and says social distancing and masks have "no basis of any kind in science," because of how he's a damned liar.
What else, Tucker? Who is the REAL force behind the idea of closing the schools to stop the spread of coronavirus? Is it Black Lives Matter? No, not this time, but we're sure he'll find a way to tie that in. Is George Soros paying the kids to stay home? OBVIOUSLY. But Tucker's got something else on his mind:
CARLSON: So, who is opposed to opening schools? Take a guess. The teachers unions. The teachers' union on every question is always the same. They would like less work, no accountability and much more pay. At least one chapter of the American Federation of Teachers is planning to go on strike if they have to work this fall. So many administrations and school districts have no choice but to obey their demands.
OK, so Tucker identified a new enemy for Trump, which is actually an old enemy. It's them devil TEACHERS' UNIONS! And by extension, it's those dirty bad liberal TEACHERS, who just want to stay alive, and who want their families and their students and their students' families to stay alive. When will this anti-Trump agenda of staying alive STOP?
We started with Tucker Carlson because if there's one host Trump listens to the most these days, it's Tucker Carlson, as Media Matters detailed here in an excellent report. Trump listens to Tucker in a way Donald Trump Jr. dreams of . Hell, his Rushmore speech was basically a copy/paste of a Tucker Carlson monologue, and we mean that quite literally. It's fucked up and it's sad and it's scary that the president of the United States is so easily led by such a minor shithole of a human being, but that's life.
There were other things on Fox News that night, of course. Laura Ingraham had one of her scoffing episodes about America's fears about coronavirus being "panic porn," and Trump maybe saw that. She referred to it as "sacrificing the kids to beat Trump." Because in this upside down reality, if we really have to keep schools closed so HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS MORE PEOPLE DON'T DIE, that is "sacrificing the kids." We'll file that under "If hell is real, she's going there," same place we file just about everything Laura Ingraham says.
But then Wednesday morning, there was a thing on "Fox & Friends," and despite how Trump is constantly breaking up with Fox News lately over their mean fake polls, he can't seem to quit them in any way, shape or form, so we bet he saw this too. It's not like he was at "work" or anything.
Tell us, Brian Kilmeade, AKA the actual stupidest person on television even if you count infomercials and those 90-day fiance-type shows:
KILMEADE: Life is full of risks, kids should learn that early that life is full of hurdles, you've got to find a way to overcome. And you've had five or six months, we've been hearing about this since February, institute a lockdown since March. We each have to get ready by September. This is not Ebola, it's the coronavirus. Mostly kids, 99.9% of kids will not be affected by it at all, we know about the transference, we also know about the rarity. This is a risk that has to be taken, and I think kids get used to not taking things for granted. They get the message.
In other words, it sounds like he's saying kids gotta learn that you can't die from going to school unless you go to school in the first place! Haha, that's the same message Fox News and the GOP have been teaching kids about guns for decades.
Anyway, we bet Trump saw that too. And then he tweeted to whine about the CDC guidelines, and then later that afternoon, the Trump CDC caved, because they're chickenshit, and the CDC functionally no longer exists.
The end.
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I have several friends who are teachers. One is a RWNJ. I am curious whether she watches Tucker. This guy is basically what Rush Limbaugh tried to become with his TV show. (Yes, there was a Rush TV show, and yes, I was forced to watch it growing up.)
But the insane backwards news cycle, where Fox reports something, then Trump tries to make it real? How are we supposed to even deal with that?! Why doesn't Fox News use that power for good?
THANKS SCOTUS!!!