Eric Boehlert: Good grief -- New York Times credits Trump for Biden's vaccine victory

[babylonsister]

Last edited Fri Mar 12, 2021, 10:59 AM - Edit history (1)

Good grief — New York Times credits Trump for Biden's vaccine victory
Both Sides madness
Eric Boehlert
2 hr ago


In a wildly misguided attempt at Trump rehabilitation, the New York Times this week suggested Trump deserves credit for the extraordinary success the new Biden administration is having getting Americans vaccinated. Leaning hard into the Both Sides narrative, the Times generously headlined its piece, "Biden Got the Vaccine Rollout Humming, With Trump’s Help."

What the article lacked however, was any compelling evidence that Trump deserves vaccine credit, after having spent all of 2020 completely indifferent to the deadly pandemic, and spreading nonstop public health lies. Fully 60 percent of Americans over the age of 60 have received their first Covid vaccine today, compared to just eight percent under Trump. Biden should rightly take bows for that remarkable trend, after the previous administration showcased its vaccine incompetence.

Under Trump, the U.S. vaccine rollout was seen as a national embarrassment. Under Biden, it’s become a model for the world, administering nearly 100 million shots. And now the Covid relief bill, which Trump and Republicans failed to pass for ten months, will pump billions into helping communities nationwide vaccinate.

The Times article represents some truly egregious revisionist history, politely positioning today's Mar-a-lago resident as a president who simply ran out of time and wasn’t able to get the pandemic job done — who worked hard to create an infrastructure for his Democratic successor. That's a wildly inaccurate retelling of what happened and the almost criminal neglect Trump showed through all of last year in terms of fighting the pandemic and getting Americans vaccinated. Instead, more than half a million died.

Trump wasn't some kind of passive, disinterested bystander during the Covid crisis. He actively made it worse at every possible turn, from the moment he gave the stand down order for the virus invasion last winter ("We have it totally under control" ), to lying about testing , telling Americans to ingest cleaning fluids in order to cleanse themselves of the virus, and the complete disregard he showed for mask-wearing right up until his final days in office. In truth, Trump spread more deliberate lies about Covid to a larger audience than anyone else on the planet, according to a study from Cornell University.

more...

https://pressrun.media/p/good-grief-new-york-times-credits

[Phoenix61]

1. As others have noted, "Liberal media my ass." nt

[maxrandb]

2. Trump spread more deliberate lies about Covid to a larger audience than anyone else on the planet,

Except for the New York Times!

[lagomorph777]

10. Bingo!

[Hoyt]

3. Biden will take us over the goal line. Honestly, I don't care if trump gets some credit for vaccine.

But, his handling of the pandemic before the vaccine was pitiful, incompetent, and maybe criminal. People died who might not have had he effectively promoted masks, isolation, calm, etc.

I suppose spending money to launch some research might have helped, although I think Pfizer didn't accept the early funding. I'm more inclined to credit drug companies for developing and manufacturing an effective vaccine.

I'm more confident under Biden that this -- and the next pandemic, economic shock, or whatever -- will be handled competently.

[wnylib]

27. Pfizer spokespersons said they operated completely

on their own, outside of any government program. Moderna was part of the government acceleration program, but I'd bet there were other companies interested in developing a vaccine, with or without government backing. It's a world crisis, with money to br made from sales domestically and abroad.

Also, it's Biden who arranged for cooperation between competitors to step up production of the J&J vaccine.

As far as I'm concerned, it's the Trump virus and the Biden vaccine.

BTW, NPR was in full both siderism mode this morning in crediting the orange menace with the vaccine production and rollout. They even agreed with a caller who said that Biden should have credited the previous guy in Biden's speech last night.

[Hoyt]

33. Basically agree, although it's kind of like arguing whether trump's economic performance up

to CV19 was Obama's or trump's doing.

I think it was Obama's, but I can see people saying that might have been true the first 6 months or so, but certainly not two to three years in.

If trump did accelerate development of vaccine -- even a day or two -- I don't mind giving him credit. It still doesn't come close to negating his incompetence, racism, hatred, encouraging insurrection, poor management of CV19, Russia, and so much more.

I suspect most of the vaccine companies would have gotten it out quickly without trump, but I'm sure it helped to know the government would pay for every bit produced. The companies that weren't able to develop an effective vaccine are now scurrying to be at least part of production.

[central scrutinizer]

4. The comments section was scathing

Hundreds of readers called them out, but the damage was already done.

[Dem4Life1102]

5. Wasn't the Pfizer vaccine developed in Germany?

Was Trump chancellor of Germany too?

[MyOwnPeace]

11. My GAWD, don't ask HIM that!

He'll tell you that they wanted him to be except there was this mean woman running the place......

[William Seger]

21. Correct, Pfizer got $0.00 from Trump

Drug companies had plenty of incentive and PLENTY of capital to develop vaccines.

[brewens]

6. Am I remembering correctly that the former guy trotted out a general to tell us about the military

being ready to spring into action to distribute the vaccine? I think it was during one of the daily campaign pressers.

I'd like to see that guy brought in to testify to Congress. Ask him just what actions they took? I'm thinking they were put on notice to prepare, but received no actual plan or guidance of any kind from the administration.

[underpants]

8. Yeah the military has had almost no role in the distribution

Unless you want to count the National Guard at vax sites.

[soothsayer]

9. Right! Remember that general apologizing for not doing anything like distributing it

After former guy bragged about having such a logistics expert. He never said why he failed. I’m sure he was told not to bother sending any out.

[dalton99a]

7. The New York Times - All the Bothsiderism And Revisionism That's Fit to Print.

Last edited Fri Mar 12, 2021, 01:27 PM - Edit history (1)

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2016 presidential election:

[5X]

12. Is it time to declare the Times a right wing news source?

[Tommymac]

31. Has been since 2008 imo. At least.

They hate The Clinton's, The Obama's and anyone associated with them.

I personally avoid any news source that is behind a paywall.

NYT's - All the news that's fit to spin. They are a conservative wolf in sheep's clothing.

[Raven123]

13. The vaccine was developed by pharmaceutical manufacturers building on years of research

If successful we can view this as a solution ready for the problem, and credit 30 years of curiosity, intellectual creativity and dogged determination funded privately and publicly along the way. Neither Biden nor Trump had much to do with it. The rollout is another matter and if the previous administration wants to defend their rollout strategy/tactics, let’s hear some facts. Let’s also hear an explanation about why they had trouble counting the doses they did have - or didn’t. I’m still not sure.

[Pepsidog]

15. NYT WTF!!!

[flibbitygiblets]

16. NYT NYET

Glad I canceled them

[LizBeth]

17. Trump rollout was messy, chaotic and inept. Biden had to first wade into the mess and clean it up

before he could implement his roll out so really Trump wasted a period of Biden time because he had to clean up Trump mess first. Times is wrong.

[RVN VET71]

18. This isn't just a case of trying to throw a bone to 45.

It is an outright deliberate misrepresentation of facts in an effort to besmirch the accomplishments of the current, legitimate administration. Trump, let it be known, did the minimum amount of work, the absolute least he could do, because he didn’t want to do anything but had to be able to lie as if he’d done something.

With Trump’s help? Like saying Frederick Douglas became an articulate and brilliant speaker and writer with a “boost” from slavers who, after all, brought his people over from Africa. For christ’s sake! Trump did what he could to deep-six WHO, Dr. Fauci, the CDC. And the Pfizer vaccine was created without a freaking penny of Trump’s money.

And The NY Times can kiss my liberal butt.

[PatSeg]

19. The article mentions "Trump" sixteen times

Though it was not all in a positive way, Sharon LaFraniere still seems to give Trump far too much credit for the vaccine rollout. From over here in the cheap seats, it kind of looked like any success was in spite of Trump, not because of him.

[Midnight Writer]

20. It was reported that Trump met ZERO times with his Covid task force after June 2020.

He lost all interest in participating once the daily TV briefings stopped, and it became clear the problem was getting worse.

It was the Deep State that filled in the leadership vacuum, running on auto pilot to get us as far as we did during his tenure.

And aren't there twenty million doses missing from the initial rollout?

Trump couldn't have made things worse if he had a playbook to follow. (which may have been the case)

The Scott Atlas debacle revealed that the Administration's goal in handling the pandemic was to exploit the crisis for political gain.

[lpbk2713]

22. Yeah and that tip about drinking bleach was a real life saver.

[thesquanderer]

34. Actually, that's what bugs me about the excerpt in the OP.

The author says, "telling Americans to ingest cleaning fluids in order to cleanse themselves of the virus" -- No, he never actually told Americans to do that. Yes, we know what he's talking about, but when there's so much truly terrible to say about Trump, over-stating/exaggerating is unnecessary and only weakens the case.

It's one thing if he's just preaching to the choir, we on the left know what he means. But I also look to good analyses to show to my less-lefty friends. And I can't show them this because they'll just come back with, "He's obviously biased. Trump never told anyone to do that. Can't trust this article. He's probably making up some of the other stuff too."

One does not need to gild the lily. (Or in this case, more like add snot to the shit.)

[BobTheSubgenius]

23. That pharmacological researchers were working hard during his term is undeniable.

I believe they would have also worked hard if I was President. Or a reasonably able gopher was.

[Texin]

24. What the actual fuck is up with the NYT?

Are they just trying to not piss off their deep pocket subscribers or what?

[Lonestarblue]

28. They came close to losing me with that article.

It read more like an opinion piece that one of their right wingers like Bret Stephens could have written. I was one of the subscribers who blasted them.

And then the very next day, WaPo had a similar article praising Trump for the Merck-J&J deal because the idea came up with the Trump team, which did nothing to move it forward. That was left to the Biden team, but according to them Trump deserved the credit.

I’m glad to see the comments here, because I was seriously beginning to wonder whether I’ve become too sensitive to perceived slights of Democrats. I recognize that I have biases just like everyone else, but these articles seriously ticked me off. And lately I’m of the opinion that Democrats should not care one iota what Republicans think. Kill the filibuster and move all of Biden’s legislation through Congress before the 2022 election. Republicans have no ideas anyway, and all they will do is delay, delay, delay and refuse to vote even for bills that included some of their wishes. We just saw this with the Recover Act, so members of Congress, including Sinema and Manchin, need to recognize that Republicans aren’t there for any bipartisanship.

[RANDYWILDMAN]

26. More Credit to Joe and Kamala for sorting Trumps cluster*@#$%

yes more of that and less of trump did something and Biden just finished it off.

Remember everything trump touches dies.

[dianaredwing]

29. I simply can't read

any more asinine lies. I am ashamed of our press, except for Jen. They are simply all paparazzi out for the kill, preferably not one that reflects back on them. There has not been any sign of a fair, let alone liberal press in major media since the 60s.

[W T F]

30. Reminds me on the the time that republicans tried to take credit for Obama killing Osama Bin Laden

[matt819]

32. The NYT didn't publish this comment

A search of the NYT archive would surely reveal an article headlined, "Germany's Nazi Party confirmed operating death camps; trains run on time."

Elizabeth Rosenthal has a piece today advocating that Biden should continue Trump's efforts on Rx price reductions. She at least had the sense to acknowledge early on that Trump's response to health care was appalling, what with trying to eliminate the ACA, taking ACA insurance away from 2 million people, and killing hundreds of thousands by his covid response. Which got me to thinking. Why would he have taken steps in the consumer's interest, i.e., reducing drug prices? This is inconsistent with his overall vileness.