Pandemics And Presidents. The Differences In How The Press Treated Obama Compared To Trump

[ZiprHead]

https://pressrun.media/p/when-the-press-buried-obama-for-ebola

There may not have not been much educating — CNN's Ashleigh Banfield famously suggested Ebola was the ISIS of biological agents and raised the specter of suicide attackers brandishing Ebola — but there was lots of Obama bashing. "I think that's a very dangerous thing for President Obama, the sense that his administration is not competent to protect the American people," warned USA Today's Susan Rice.

CNN's Wolf Blitzer announced, “Ebola has certainly eroded the confidence in the way the Obama administration and medical professionals have handled it.” Colleague Gloria Borger insisted Americans were “frustrated” and “fearful” and “angry” about key events, including the administration's handling of the Ebola virus' scare. And New York Times columnist Frank Bruni claimed the disease was “ravaging Americans' already tenuous faith in the competence of our government and its bureaucracies.”

Reminder: In 2014 there were just two confirmed Ebola deaths in the United States — two. A grand total of four Americans were infected with the disease.

Incredibly, just last week reporters were giving Trump credit for changing his "tone" about the pandemic and unveiling a new serious approach, while the leaderless country careened further into crisis. (He did the same thing in April and the media fell for it then, too.)

If President Barack Obama had overseen more than 100,000 Ebola deaths back in 2014 when the virus reached U.S. shores, do you think the Beltway press would have tipped its cap to Obama if he appeared behind a White House podium and, for one day, discussed the health crisis in a different "tone"?

How about if Obama lied relentlessly about the death toll, and ludicrously told reporters that if it hadn't been for his swift action more than one million Americans would've died from Ebola?

 

[Worldtraveller]

To be fair, there's a critical difference in how the office of the president handled it back then compared to now that can account for a lot of the difference.


Obama did it while being black.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Wasn't much of that the nurse that decided to fly up to NE Ohio? Kind of became a, well... we didn't think she'd do something so stupid.