Everybody Hates Bob

 Did Bob Woodward Kill 180,000 People?

Venerated and decorated journalist Bob Woodward has a new book title "Rage" coming out, for which he spent 18 hours interviewing Trump. As with all books on the Trump Administration, the lead up to publication has been a steady trickle of details from the book being published by the media. The biggest revelation thus far has been audio from his interviews where Trump admits to both knowing that COVID-19 is deadlier than the flu and lying to the American public about it. So where have the conservative and liberal media landed?

Fox News: Why did Woodward/The Washington Post hold this information for so long?

Instead of focusing on the outright lies of the President of the United States during a national pandemic that has thus far killed nearly 200,000 Americans, Fox's biggest question relates to timing. Brian Flood with Fox News published a piece that focuses on the discrepancy in timing between the interviews that occurred in February and March and the release of the audio now. This is the same line of questioning that has been taken up by the various talking heads at Fox, so it's fairly easy to predict what Trump will be tweeting about: 


 So, then where did the liberal media land?


Slate: Was it wrong of Woodward to withhold Trump's comments?

More of the same! Slate published a discussion between several of their writers focusing on whether Woodward made the right call in not immediately publishing the audio revealing Trump's deception. Their take is a little more nuanced. Some argue that the timing is better now because it may have a bigger impact on the election, with others arguing that releasing the audio earlier could have convinced conservative media and some Trump supporters to actually take the pandemic seriously. Both arguments are valid, and it's impossible to know whether releasing the audio earlier would have been a net benefit or not. 

So does everyone agree?

No, not quite. The Daily Wire - the home site of the poster boy to white male fragility Ben Shapiro - has spun a rather interesting tale about how the revelations revealed in Woodward's reporting are anything but. They claim that Trump was perfectly clear about the dangers of COVID-19 with America (he wasn't) and that he never downplayed the threat of the virus (he did).

Meanwhile, The NY Times Editorial Board published a piece decrying what they identified as Trump's lies and detailing how his statements and the subsequent actions of his administration directly led to more deaths. They compare death rates in America with those of more successful countries like Canada, detailing how our inaction and the reticence of the Trump Administration to act has cost at least 80,000 more deaths than would have occurred at the same death rate as our neighbors to the North.

Comments

  1. Olivia ShapiroSeptember 19, 2020 at 7:31 AM

    Joshua,
    I will copy a link in my reply, and highly reccomend you watch. I believe that Trump was clear about the virus and how many lives may be lost since March, and he has done nothing but advance our research and knowledge on this virus. We are the world leader in Covid tests, and we have three vaccines in stage three testing, that is fact. Kayleigh McEnany in this video explains, but I highly reccomend paying special attention starting at minute 5:40.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bt4vn21SkQ

    The timing of this release is indeed important, because it seems as though things that may reflect badly on presidents always present themselves just before elections. This trend is a historic one, but has been especially noticeable in this years election. Trump was right to say in his tweet, "Didn't he have the obligation to do so?" in regards to Bob Woodward releasing his quotes from interviews months ago. Why didn't he? I would love to hear from Bob Woodward as to why he kept these interviews locked away until just a little over a month before elections.
    Great analysis of the two news sources!

    ReplyDelete

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