US Politics 📺📻 - Bernie’s Defeat Shows Why Socialism Doesn’t Work

Bernie’s Defeat Shows Why Socialism Doesn’t Work

Socialism is about ego and greed, not helping people.

Wed Apr 8, 2020 

Daniel Greenfield, Front Page Magazine 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/bernies-defeat-shows-why-socialism-doesnt-work-daniel-greenfield/

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Senator Bernie Sanders, berated his staff, forced female staffers to sleep in the same rooms as men, exposed them to sexual harassment, spread hate, allied with terrorists, all to win two elections he lost.

The only thing the socialist got out of his failed campaigns was membership in the 1 percent.

That and memories of flying around the country and the world on private jets, and his three homes, and bulging bank accounts paid for by an army of gullible idiots who believed in his cause more than he did.

Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren could be locking up the Democrat nomination right now. Instead they wasted $300 million and lost to a crooked senile hack who can barely complete a sentence. 

The two socialist candidates had raised the most money directly and through PACs, $182 million for Bernie, $151 million for Warren, had the most passionate supporters, and the best media coverage.

Why then did these two sprightly septuagenarian socialists lose? Because they’re socialists.

Socialists believe in redistributing other people’s things, but fiercely cling to their own. The greediest people in the world are lefties. The two socialist senators were full of big ideas for what to do with other people’s money, but don’t touch their homes and their millions. And don’t redistribute their voters.

When other Democrats dropped out and united behind Biden, Bernie and Warren couldn’t make way for each other. Even when Warren dropped out, she refused to endorse Bernie, dooming him to defeat.

Bernie and Warren were running on the same basic issues. When Warren refused to endorse Bernie, it was a suicide bombing that not only blew up his campaign, but took down her own platform with it.

It wasn’t about the issues. Bernie and Warren were really motivated by greed and ego.

Neither Warren nor Bernie could do what all the other candidates in the race did, drop out and endorse somebody else. The socialists stayed in and doomed each other in a political suicide pact because they were too petty and greedy to overcome their differences for a higher cause. That’s how socialism dies.

Socialists pretend that they want everyone else to sacrifice for the greater good, but they never do.

The Soviet Union’s Communist leadership reacted to Chernobyl by moving radioactive dairy products away from Moscow and to other parts of the country. China’s Communist leadership dealt with the coronavirus by lying to their people and to the rest of the world to maintain their regime’s credibility.

The EU has descended into infighting in every crisis, from Muslim mass migrant invasions to the coronavirus, over who has to make the sacrifices. New York City’s Mayor Bill de Blasio insisted on going to the gym, with an NYPD detail, while others were told to practice social distancing. Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot decided to get her hair cut even as the city’s small businesses were being closed down.

It’s easy for politicians to tell ordinary people to sacrifice while they live it up Masque of the Red Death style during a plague.

But what happens when a trolley problem of two top socialist politicians arrives, and they have to decide which of them makes the sacrifice for the greater good? The answer is deeply revealing.

Socialist leaders won’t sacrifice for each other. Not for the sake of their cause. Or for anything.

Ideology didn’t unite Bernie and Warren. Instead, one by one, the two socialist politicians were forced to drop out, leaving both of them alone with nothing. Socialism doesn’t unite us. It divides and isolates us.

Like the Chinese Communist virus.

Socialism doesn’t work because instead of the noble altruistic leaders the ideology calls for, it actually attracts meanspirited and greedy control freaks who use it to set up their own private fiefdoms. Once implemented, actual socialism never turns into a utopia of angels, disdainful of materialism, but descends into a hell of demons who fight each other over the last stale cookie on a tarnished plate.

That’s why idealistic revolutions end in cycles of purges fueled by ego, malice, and greed.

Bernie and Warren couldn’t put each other up against a wall, so they had to settle for the next best thing. He brought down her campaign and then she brought down his campaign. Neither would serve in heaven and won’t even have the opportunity, like Milton’s Satan, or Stalin and Mao, to rule in hell.

Before the two of them become footnotes in electoral history, there is a question they should answer.

How dare they demand that everyone else sacrifice for the greater good, when neither of them would? Where did these two socialists get the chutzpah to lecture Americans on everything from how much deodorant they use to how much taxes they pay? Where is their commitment to redistribution?

Bernie Sanders quadrupled his net worth since he began plotting to run for president in 2012. He made his millions from his national profile. And he also used that profile to funnel money to family members. Every time he ran for President on a platform of taking away everyone’s money, he came away richer.

Why did Bernie take so long to drop out? Because even ActBlue idiots wouldn’t go on paying for his private jets if he dropped out. It took a pandemic and the effective shutdown of the election for the scam to end. If it wasn’t for the Chinese Virus, Bernie would have dragged it out to the last million.

But there’s no private jet flights paid for by ActBlue donors to the Vatican in a pandemic.

Bernie’s campaign slogan, “Not Me, Us”, was the biggest lie since, “Hope and Change.”

It was always about “Me”. It was about Bernie, his book deals, his houses, his private jets, his interviews, and his fame. At his age, he knows that he will probably never run again and never cash in again.

None of that makes Bernie a hypocrite. Worse. It makes him a socialist.

Bernie Sanders has spent his entire miserable life figuring out a way to make money without working. The socialist lifestyle of collective farms wasn’t for him. He wanted to get into politics because he’s lazy, narcissistic, a control freak, abusive, greedy, and incompetent. Those character traits left him with two options: Hollywood and Washington D.C. And Bernie is a bad actor who can only memorize a few lines.

His career was built on pandering to the same radicals when he first got into politics and when he tried to crawl into the White House. Along the way he completely changed his views on any number of issues from immigration to gun control. But he never stopped figuring out how to cash in on his politics.

And now he’s done it.

Bernie leaves his great socialist crusade as a 1 percenter, a millionaire with three homes, despite accomplishing absolutely nothing. Socialism isn’t real for ordinary people, but it’s real for socialists.

“Not Me, Us”, Bernie claimed.

What have the “Us” gotten out of the Bernie campaign beyond the opportunity to pay for all his stuff? The same thing anyone gets under socialism: the privilege of paying for the lifestyles of their leaders.

Socialism isn’t about helping people. It’s about helping socialists.

Between the two of them, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, brought down the socialist cause. But nobody destroys socialism like socialists. It was the Communists who really brought down the USSR and if the EU and Communist China’s leadership fall to the pandemic, it will also be entirely their own doing.

Lefties have always been the great destroyers of their own movements. Bernie and Warren followed in that proud tradition, sacrificing their own movement to their greed and egos, and leaving the dumpster fire of their campaigns with millions in book payments from the very corporations that they condemn.

And if you think they were a grifting disaster, wait until Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez runs for president.

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The Coconut Whisperer

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Whales filmed having whale of a time during lockdown

APRIL 9, 2020, by John Leicester
https://phys.org/news/2020-04-whales-whale-lockdown.html

added by CiC from goo search

With humans away, the whales will play.

In another sign that wild animals are roaming more freely while locked-down people are sheltering indoors from the coronavirus, a maritime patrol has filmed remarkable images of whales powering through Mediterranean waters off the coast of southern France.

The graceful pair of fin whales was filmed Tuesday in waters off the Calanques national park, a protected reserve of outstanding natural beauty next to the usually bustling but now locked-down Mediterranean port city of Marseille.

stock image added by CiC (google search)

Didier Reault, who heads the park board, told France Info radio on Thursday that it is "very, very rare" for fin whales to be spotted and filmed at such close quarters in the reserve's waters. He said the whales usually stay further out in deeper Mediterranean waters.

Fin whales are among the largest of the species, weighing as much as 70 tons and growing past 20 meters (65 feet) in length.

Wild animals venturing into places vacated by humans have also been spotted elsewhere around the world, as hundreds of millions of people are locked down and limited in their movements to try to slow the coronavirus pandemic.

For most people, the coronavirus causes mild to moderate symptoms such as fever and cough. But for some, especially older adults and the infirm, it can cause pneumonia and death.

Other places where animals have taken advantage of the peace of less human activity include Llandudno, a town in North Wales. There, mountain goats have been filmed roaming in frisky clumps through the streets and chomping on plants in people's front yards.

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How Communists Brought the China Flu to Italy

Italy's Communist Recipe for Disaster

Was it just the Chinese who brought the virus to Italy?

Thu Apr 9, 2020 

Giacomino Nicolazzo

7

Giacomino Nicolazzo is one of Italy’s most beloved writers. Born and raised in Central Pennsylvania, he lives in a small village in Lombardy where he writes his books.

 

Montecalvo, Lombardy, Italy.
 

As I sit here in my involuntary isolation, it was just reported that overnight 743 more people died and 5.249 new cases have been reported.  This brings the total cases of infection to 69,176 and the body count to 6,820.  We take relief in knowing that 8,326 people have recovered so far.  (Numbers as of 3/24, 8:30pm in Italy.)

 

Most towns here in Italy, from the upper reaches of the Alps to the ancient shores of Sicilia and Sardenia, while not deserted, are closer to being ghost towns than the bustling centers of tourism, business and daily life they were just a few weeks ago.

 

Stores and shops have been shuttered. Restaurants and coffee shops no longer serve customers.  Schools, universities, sporting arenas…even our museums and theaters…all closed.  Even the Vatican City has closed its gates and armed patrols monitor the 20 foot tall walls that protect it!

 

Streets and roads are now empty for as far as the eye can see.  Normally they would be filled with crazed Italian drivers in tiny cars and scooters (the ones that sound like demonic insects) darting here and there, reaching the limits of centrifugal force on our roundabouts.  In the piazze of our towns and cities, there are now officially more pigeons than people.

 

Many of us know someone who has been infected and recovered.  Some of us know someone who did not recover … now they are dead.  But everyone knows someone who has been affected by this microscopic monster in one way or another.

 

Sixty million of us are in lockdown.  It is like a war zone here.  We are being held prisoner in our own homes by an unseen enemy that sneaked in unnoticed by most of us.  As you will read in just a few more minutes, there were those who knew something like this was coming . . or at least they should have.

 

So who is to blame?  With all this craziness swirling like a whirlpool at our feet, I just had to find the blame answer.  And so I have spent my free time (of which I have a lot in these days) digging and researching.  I was literally shocked to discover how this has come to be.

 

I am not going to bore you with talk of Patient ‘0’ who spread it to Patient ‘1’ and how mathematics efficiently explains the rapid expansion of infection.  No, I am going to tell you how (as I see it) the virus came to Italy.

 

It has everything to do with communists.  Allow me to explain.

 

Beginning in about 2014, Matteo Renzi, the imbecile ex-mayor of Firenze (Florence) acting as the leader of the Partito Democratico (synonymous with the Italian Communist party), somehow managed to get himself elected as Italy’s Prime Minister.  To give you a proper frame of reference, Matteo Renzi was so far left, he would make Barack Obama look like Barry Goldwater.

 

At the same time that Renzi was leading Italy into oblivion, strange things were happening in Italy’s economy.  Banks were failing, but not closing.  Retirement ages were being extended.  For some reason the pension funds were dwindling or disappearing.  The national sales tax we call IVA (Value Added Tax) rose from 18% to 20%, then to 21% and again to 22%.

 

And in the midst of all this financial chicanery, the Chinese began furiously buying up Italian real estate and businesses in the North.

 

Now, the reason I mention Renzi and the Chinese together is that strange things were also going on between the governments of Italy and China.  A blind eye was being turned to the way the Chinese were buying businesses in the financial, telecommunication, industrial, and fashion sectors of Italy’s economy, all of which take place in Milano.

 

To be brief, China was getting away with purchases and acquisitions in violation of Italian law and EU Trade Agreements with the US and the UK - and no one in either of those countries (not Obama in the US or Cameron in the UK) said a thing in their country’s defense.  As a matter of fact, much of it was hidden from the public in all three countries.

 

In 2014, China infused the Italian economy with €5 billion through purchases of companies costing less than €100 million each.  By the time Renzi left office (in disgrace) in 2016, Chinese acquisitions had exceeded €52 billion.  When the dust settled, China owned more than 300 companies, representing 27% of the major Italian corporations.

 

The Bank of China now owns five major banks in Italy, all of which had been secretly (and illegally) propped up by Renzi using pilfered pension funds!  Soon after, the China Milano Equity Exchange was opened and much of Italy’s wealth was being funneled back to the Chinese mainland.

 

Chinese state entities own Italy’s major telecommunication corporation (Telecom) as well as its major utilities (ENI and ENEL).  Upon entry into the telecommunication market, Huawei established a facility in Segrate, a suburb of Milano.  It launched is first research center there and worked on the study of microwaves which has resulted in the possibly-dangerous technology we call 5G.

 

China also now owns controlling interest in Fiat-Chrysler, Prysmian and Terna.  You will be surprised to know that when you put a set of Pirelli tires on your car, the profits are going to China.  Yep, the Chinese colossus of ChemChina, a chemical industry titan, bought that company, too!

 

Last but not least is Ferretti yachts, the most prestigious yacht builder in Europe.  Incredibly, it is no longer owned by the Ferretti family. 

 

But the sector in which Chinese companies invested most was Italy’s profitable fashion industry.  The Pinco Pallino, Miss Sixty, Sergio Tacchini, Roberta di Camerino and Mariella Burani brands have been acquired by 100%.

 

Designer Salvatore Ferragamo sold 16% and Caruso sold 35%.  The most famous case is Krizia, purchased in 2014 by Shenzhen Marisfrolg Fashion Company, one of the leaders of high-priced, ready-to-wear fashions in Asia.

 

Throughout all of these purchases and acquisitions, Renzi’s government afforded the Chinese unrestricted and unfettered access to Italy and its financial markets, many coming through without customs inspections.

 

Quite literally, tens of thousands of Chinese came in through Milano (illegally) and went back out carrying money, technology, and corporate secrets.

 

Thousands more were allowed to enter and disappeared into shadows of Milano and other manufacturing cities of Lombardy, only to surface in illegal sewing shops, producing knock-off designer clothes and slapping ‘Made In Italy’ labels on them.  All with the tacit approval of the Renzi government.

 

It was not until there was a change in the governing party in Italy that the sweatshops and the illegal entry and departure of Chinese nationals was stopped.  Matteo Salvini, representing the Lega Nord party, closed Italy’s ports to immigrants and systematically began disassembling the sweatshops and deporting those in Italy illegally.

 

But his rise to power was short-lived.  Italy is a communist country.  Socialism is in the national DNA.  Ways were found to remove Salvini, after which the communist party, under the direction of Giuseppe Conte, reopened the ports.  Immediately, thousands of unvetted, undocumented refugees from the Middle East and East Africa began pouring in again.

 

Access was again provided to the Chinese, under the old terms, and as a consequence thousands of Chinese, the majority from Wuhan, began arriving in Milano.

 

In December of last year, the first inklings of a coronavirus were noticed in Lombardy - in the Chinese neighborhoods.  There is no doubt amongst senior medical officials that the virus was brought here from China.

 

By the end of January 2020 cases were being reported left and right.  By mid-February the virus was beginning to seriously overload the Lombardy hospitals and medical clinics.  They are now in a state of collapse.

 

The Far-Left politicians sold out and betrayed the Italian people with open border policies and social justice programs.  One of the reasons the health care system collapsed so quickly is because the Renzi government (and now continued under the Conte government) redirected funds meant to sustain the medical system, to pay for the tens of thousands of immigrants brought in to Italy against the will of the Italian people.

 

If you remember the horrible earthquake that decimated the villages around Amatricia, in the mountains east of Rome in 2015, you would also remember how the world responded by sending millions of dollars to help those affected.

 

But there is a law in Italy that prevents private donations to charitable Italian organizations.  All money and donations received must be turned over to a government agency, who in turn is to appropriate the funds as needed.  But that agency is corrupt, just as are all the others.

 

Most of the money never reached a single victim in the mountains.  The Renzi government redirected the vast majority of those funds to pay for the growing immigrant and refugee costs.

 

As the economy worsened under the burden of illegal immigration, compounded by gross government spending and incompetence, unemployment rose quickly…especially among young people.  The unemployment rate for men and women under age 35 is close to 40%.

 

So more money was diverted from the health care system and used to pay what is known here as guaranteed income.  Whether you work or not you are paid here, especially if you belong to the PD!  The government simply raises taxes on those who do work.

 

Let me give you a quick example of the height of insanity to which Italian taxation has risen.  If you live in a building that has a balcony or balconies - and any of those balconies cast a shadow on the ground, you must pay a public shadow tax!  I will say no more!

 

The point I am trying to make here is that not only did the Chinese bring the virus to Italy (and the rest of the world) it was far-Left politics and policies that facilitated it.

 

This should hopefully be a warning to Americans that while they work to rid themselves of the China Virus, they should just as vehemently endeavor to rid their government of any politician that circumvents the Constitution and ignores the laws of the land . . .  plain and simple.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/italys-communist-recipe-disaster-frontpagemagcom/

Death By Republican or Democrats? Take Your Pick.

My, my what a tangle web we weave when money is involved.  We have the rich elitist republicans on one side trying to convince the little scallywags of the world to come out from underneath their beds and get the economy  moving to bolster back up their portfolio's and become subservient   again to their every whim or the democrats anxiously awaiting your arrival to the hospital so they can lecture you on how bad hydroxychloroquine is for you until you are blue in the face enough to be intubated.  They can then maximize their profits off your hospitalization to the tune of $39,000 a ventilator.  Yup you read that right.  The government will pay the states $13,000 for each covid hospitalization and if they intubate you they get $39,000.  Just from the total deaths alone yesterday in New York City they made a whopping $28,509,000...no wonder they are in a hurry to fill up that ship. You better believe the states will reimburse hospitals the medicaid rates while pocketing the rest.

I mean really I have wondered for days why democrats would be so down on the use of a drug that has shown much promise in the fight against this disease.  Unlike republicans who just want you to drop dead making them richer the democrats have found themselves a new revenue avenue, you.   To add insult to injury if you get in a car accident and succumb to your injuries but are found to have covid also at the time of your death they can write covid on your death certificate and claim their bundle of cash according to new CDC guidelines.  That's if the doctor who appeared on Laura Ingraham show interpretation of the guidelines is correct, after all Laura's busy pushing her own agenda to drive the numbers down to justify getting the scallywags back to work by downplaying the number of deaths due to covid so she doesn't like it they can play this game if true.  This would allow the numbers to go up not down.

Yes people you are being led down the river and it's time to call them out on it.  You are the back bone that makes this country great and you don't deserve to be mislead like this.

Cats can catch coronavirus, study finds, prompting WHO investigation

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/cats-can-catch-coronavirus-study-finds-prompting-who-investigation/ar-BB12lXWx?li=BBnbcA1

 Cats can become infected with the new coronavirus but dogs appear not to be vulnerable, according to a study published on Wednesday, prompting the WHO to say it will take a closer look at transmission of the virus between humans and pets.

The study, published on the website of the journal Science, found that ferrets can also become infected with SARS-CoV-2, the scientific term for the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease.

Dogs, chickens, pigs and ducks are not likely to catch the virus, however, the researchers found.

The study was aimed at identifying which animals are vulnerable to the virus so they can be used to test experimental vaccines to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 83,000 people worldwide since it emerged in China in December.

SARS-CoV-2 is believed to have spread from bats to humans. Except for a few reported infections in cats and dogs, there has not been strong evidence that pets can be carriers.

A tiger at the Bronx Zoo in New York City who developed a dry cough and loss of appetite after contact with an infected zookeeper tested positive for the coronavirus on Sunday.

The study, based on research conducted in China in January and February, found cats and ferrets highly susceptible to the virus when researchers attempted to infect the animals by introducing viral particles via the nose.

They also found cats can infect each other via respiratory droplets. Infected cats had virus in the mouth, nose and small intestine. Kittens exposed to the virus had massive lesions in their lungs, nose and throat.

"Surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 in cats should be considered as an adjunct to elimination of COVID-19 in humans," the authors wrote.

In ferrets, the virus was found in the upper respiratory tract but did not cause severe disease.

Antibody tests showed dogs were less likely to catch the virus, while inoculated pigs, chickens, and ducks were not found to have any strain of the virus.

"It's both interesting and not terribly surprising in the sense that with the original SARS epidemic, civet cats were implicated as one of the vectors that may have transmitted virus to humans," said Daniel Kuritzkes, head of infectious diseases at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital.

"What these data do provide is support for the recommendation that people who are with COVID-19 should be distancing themselves, not only from other household members but also from their household pets, so as not to transmit the virus to their pets, particularly to cats or other felines," he said.

The World Health Organization said on Wednesday it is working with its partners to look more closely at the role of pets in the health crisis.

Based on the evidence so far, WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove told a news conference: "We don't believe that they are playing a role in transmission but we think that they may be able to be infected from an infected person."

The WHO's top emergencies expert Mike Ryan asked people not to retaliate against animals over the outbreak.

"They're beings in their own right and they deserve to be treated with kindness and respect. They are victims like the rest of us," he said. (Reporting by Saumya Sibi Joseph in Bengaluru; Editing by Nancy Lapid and Sonya Hepinstall)

Trump’s Fox News Cabinet Tells Him the Coronavirus Crisis Is Over

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-fox-news-cabinet-tells-183118416.html

Throughout the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump’s decisions and stances have seemingly been influenced by the unofficial advisers he treasures most: Fox News primetime hosts.

After downplaying for weeks the threat of the virus, just as many on Fox News did the same, the president began taking it seriously last month after Tucker Carlson personally confronted him before delivering an on-air monologue calling for action. Elsewhere, Fox stars have been the primary driving force behind Trump’s incessant promotion of an unproven anti-malarial drug as the miracle COVID-19 cure.

And in recent days, it seems, the president has been receiving his newest coronavirus intel briefing from Fox News. This time, they say, the pandemic is over and it’s time to move on.

Throughout Tuesday night’s primetime stretch, Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham were in lockstep in telegraphing to Trump a message that the pandemic’s threat has been overstated, death counts have been inflated, and the U.S. is already on the downside of the curve.

Carlson, who received mainstream plaudits for his “admirable” early coronavirus coverage, kicked off his show by declaring that the crisis “may have passed,” noting that health-care systems across the country haven’t come close to collapsing—“except in a handful of places.”

“Patients are not dying alone in the hallways of emergency rooms with physicians too overwhelmed to treat them,” he asserted. “That was the concern. It happens in other countries, it's not happening here. Thank God for that.”

There have been numerous reports and testimonials from health-care workers expressing horror over the conditions of overcrowded hospitals and the stress it has placed on both medical staffers and patients. Much reporting has also been done on how many patients are dying alone and away from family members and friends from the disease.

But despite nearly 13,000 U.S. deaths and at least 400,000 confirmed cases, with portions of the country having yet to suffer the worst effects of the outbreak, Carlson called for a quick reversal of social-distancing restrictions in order to jumpstart the economy, citing downward revisions of coronavirus models as the key reason.

“Before we go ahead and alter our lives and our country forever, it is fair to ask about the numbers, their numbers, the ones we acted on the first time, that turned out to be completely wrong,” the Fox star fumed. “How did they screw that up so thoroughly? That is a fair question.”

Adjustments of expected death tolls in some models—which, weeks ago, showed as many as 240,000 American deaths—have largely occurred due to the widespread adoption of social-distancing guidelines and the assumption that school and business closures will stay in place through the summer. Even factoring all that in, the models still project roughly 80,000 deaths.

Nevertheless, over the past few days, Carlson has been pushing the president to ignore medical expertise and quickly move forward with economic activity. 

“Is there a single person who sincerely expects the coronavirus itself will hurt more people in the end than the damage we're causing in our response to it? Probably not,” he said on Monday night. “Mass unemployment is almost certain to cause far more harm, including physical harm, to the average family than this disease.”

Carlson has also railed against top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has urged Americans to embrace social distancing in order to flatten the curve. Calling it “bewildering” that the U.S. is allowing medical “experts” to make policy decisions, Carlson claimed last week that Fauci is proposing “national suicide” by pushing aggressive social distancing. “We should never let someone like that run this country,” he said.

Fox News senior analyst Brit Hume, who has recently been at the forefront of right-wing media’s questioning of coronavirus deaths, has also joined the chorus of Fox stars agitating against medical expertise. The official COVID-19 death count has been inflated, he declared Carlson on Tuesday evening.

“Dr. Birx said tonight during the briefing at the White House that all deaths from anyone who died with coronavirus is counted as if the person died from coronavirus,” Hume said. “Now, we all know that isn’t true.”

“And if everybody is being automatically classified, if they're found to have COVID-19, as a COVID-19 death, we’re going to get a very large number of deaths that way and we’re probably not going to have an accurate count of what the real death total is,” he added.

Besides the fact that flu deaths—which Trump and Fox figures have constantly used as a comparison point to downplay the pandemic—are tracked the exact same way, and coronavirus disproportionately impacts people with pre-conditions, it is actually far more likely that the COVID-19 death count has been understated so far.

Hannity, meanwhile, kicked off his Tuesday evening broadcast by claiming there is a “ton of good news” surrounding the pandemic, touting revised downward estimates of the death count to suggest that regular economic activity should restart very soon.

In a phone interview with the president, Hannity—who has served as an unofficial Trump adviser and confidant—noted that the “cure can’t be worse than the problem” and nudged the president to reveal when he’d roll back social-distancing policies.

“I’d love to open with a big bang, one beautiful country and just open,” Trump declared, adding, “We’re looking at two concepts. We’re looking at the concept where you open up sections and we’re also looking at the concept where you open up everything.”

In a Wednesday morning tweet, Trump further hinted that he is looking to end restrictions “sooner rather than later,” adding that the “horror” of coronavirus “must be quickly forgotten” and predicting that the economy “will BOOM” going forward.

Laura Ingraham, however, may have been the most aggressive among her primetime colleagues in openly pushing Trump to view the pandemic threat as completely neutralized.

Claiming the experts were “wrong” with their modeling and that it caused undue panic for Americans, Ingraham echoed Carlson by railing against medical officials, claiming this pandemic should “make us less willing to rely on the same experts to help determine when and how we should reopen our economy.”

“We didn’t vote for doctors,” exclaimed Ingraham, who recently sat with the president to tout the unproven coronavirus cure hydroxychloroquine. “We voted for political leadership that sees the big picture. That means the whole picture of America.”

She continued to hammer away at that message Wednesday on her Twitter account.

“At some point, the president is going to have to look at Drs. Fauci and Birx and say, we're opening on May 1,” she wrote on Wednesday morning. “Give me your best guidance on protocols, but we cannot deny our people their basic freedoms any longer.”

“America must get back to work,” Ingraham blared in another tweet. “‘Experts’ were wrong on fatalities by a factor of 30 now want to dictate when we reopen.”

While Trump’s Fox News cabinet is declaring the crisis over, the network’s brass is still taking the pandemic seriously, implementing strict social-distancing policies for its employees. In a memo sent last week, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott announced the company would distribute thermometers to all essential workers and suggested the use of face masks for anyone who had to come into one of Fox’s offices. Additionally, Scott said that Fox was targeting May 4 as a possible return date for employees currently telecommuting.

And as Fox News’ biggest stars tried to convince the president to ditch social distancing altogether, one of Trump’s own health officials rebuked the network’s faux-populist manipulation of the expert data and projections.

“Physical distancing is incredibly important—remember the projections,” Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir said Wednesday on Fox & Friends. “I have seen people twist that like this was not going to be that bad after all and we didn’t need to do it. That’s a complete misinterpretation. The estimate of deaths going down is the result of the fact that we have listened to the president and vice president and task force.”

“I do want to emphasize the point, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but don’t keep your foot—don’t take your foot off the gas,” Giroir continued. “Because we really need to continue these efforts because we could see another peak, a second peak, a third peak if people don’t do the physical distancing or they think it’s all over.

“It’s not over yet.”

Defense official says media reports about November coronavirus intel assessment are false

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/defense-november-coronavirus-intelligence-assessment-reports-false

A defense official on Wednesday issued a rare denial of reports by ABC News and others that claimed a November intelligence assessment warned about a rapidly spreading coronavirus in China that posed a threat to American forces in the region.

The official said no such assessment existed.

ABC News cited unnamed officials with knowledge of the assessment by the military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) that raised concerns of the coronavirus and highlighted how it was disputing daily life and business in the area.

Col. R. Shane Day, the director of the NCMI, a component of the Defense Intelligence Agency, refuted the ABC News report in a statement.

"As a matter of practice the National Center for Medical Intelligence does not comment publicly on specific intelligence matters," he said. "However, in the interest of transparency during this current public health crisis, we can confirm that media reporting about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November of 2019 is not correct. No such NCMI product exists."

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The supposed intelligence reportedly was obtained through wire and computer intercepts and satellite images. ABC News did not immediately respond to a Fox News request for comment Wednesday.

The DIA and NCMI spent the past 24 hours going over anything that could be related to the alleged assessment, but failed to find anything, a defense official told Fox News.

ABC News reported that the White House was briefed several times about the document, with one source telling the outlet that "analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event." Another source said policy-makers and decision-makers across the federal government, including the National Security Council at the White House, were repeatedly briefed on the matter.

President Trump first received the information in a daily briefing in early January, according to ABC News. The Pentagon said there was intelligence of a possible COVID-19 in January that could cross the Pacific Ocean and impact the United States, but it was not a dire warning.

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The Joint Chiefs of Staff starting seeing signs of a serious spread affecting U.S. forces in late January, Fox News is told. It was presented, as was common, with caveats of "on the one hand... on the other hand."

"The timeline of the intel side of this may be further back than we’re discussing," the ABC News source said of preliminary reports from Wuhan, the city considered the initial epicenter of the pandemic that has since re-opened after weeks of total lockdown. "But this was definitely being briefed beginning at the end of November as something the military needed to take a posture on."

As of Wednesday night, the U.S. has seen over 430,000 known COVID-19 cases, including nearly 13,000 deaths.

Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told George Stephanopoulos on ABC News' "This Week" that he couldn't recall a November warning.

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"So, you would have known if there was briefed to the National Security Council in December, wouldn't you?" Stephanopoulos asked.

"Yes. I'm not aware of that," Esper replied.