Each of the two previous presidents has been infected with coronavirus in their office. Joe Biden was last week, while Joe Trump caught it in October 2020. However, the tone is quite different. New York Times coverage of those two events couldn’t be more different.
In Saturday’s “Biden Learns to Live With the Risks of the Coronavirus” by Michael Shear and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, there was no hint of blaming Biden for the hundreds of thousands of American deaths due to COVID that have occurred on his watch, or of his catching COVID himself due to his own lack of care. Instead, the paper suggested he was a victim, describing how “the White House has dropped most of the extraordinary measures it once employed to protect the commander in chief.”
The event opened with a touching-feely Biden story that could have caused the Covid-hysterical media to break into a sweat, if it was performed unmasked by a Republican politician.
One after another, President Biden hugged and kissed them.
At a packed ceremony in the East Room of the White House on July 7, Mr. Biden bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, on 16 Americans, some in their 80s or 90s. After reaching out to place the medal around their necks and hugging most, the president gave three of them a hug on the cheek.
The new-found fatalism about the president seemingly destined to catch COVID marks a striking change from the scare tactics around COVID coverage so prevalent during the Trump era.
There was no doubt in the West Wing that Biden would contract the disease. By this week, many of the people around him already had….
Michael Shear reported:
Mr. Biden’s coronavirus infection is a stark illustration that the Covid vaccines, powerful as they are, are far from the bulletproof shield that scientists once hoped for.
Biden also thought the vaccines would be “bulletproof.” The Times certainly made no mocking mention of President Biden’s declaration at a CNN Town Hall in 2021: “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.”
By contrast, the vituperative mockery came immediately upon President Trump’s diagnosis on October 2, 2020. Alexander Burns’ political memo “Trump’s Illness Makes It Clear: This Election Was Always About the Virus” seethed with anger and blame.
However, Mr. Trump had been afflicted by the coronavirus long before he was diagnosed. Many Americans have already criticized him for his actions in dealing with the disease. Each of the subsidiary discussions arising from this pandemic — regarding questions such as reopening business and schools, implementing Mask mandates, social ditancing, and hastening vaccine delivery – polls show that Mr. Trump was not at the right end of public opinion.
Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” did in fact “hasten the delivery of a vaccine,” saving hundreds of thousands of lives, and the efficacy of mask mandates have been cast in doubt even among liberal media outlets, and everyone but the teachers’ union heads admit that closing schools was a moral and educational disaster. But don’t wait for the paper to admit Trump was right about some things COVID-related.
The headline and subhead to Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman’s story was no less spiteful toward a sick president:
Trump Tests Positive for the Coronavirus — The president’s result came after he spent months playing down the severity of the outbreak that has killed more than 207,000 in the United States and hours after insisting that ‘the end of the pandemic is in sight.’
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