Fox News star Tucker Carlson, all but alone among his fellow primetime hosts in framing the novel coronavirus pandemic as a serious problem instead of a partisan hoax to hurt President Donald Trump, is potentially coping with his own concerns regarding his potential exposure to COVID-19.Carlson was among several guests at Mar-a-Lago last weekend who shook hands with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in close proximity to his press secretary, who has tested positive for the disease. Trump stood close by as Carlson greeted Bolsonaro. Since that Saturday night encounter, several conservative lawmakers and the mayor of Miami, who was also present, have self-quarantined. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez tested positive after attending the dinner for Bolsonaro. Carlson was at Mar-a-Lago to attend a birthday party for former Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle, who has been dating Donald Trump Jr.“Tucker has followed all of the necessary protocols and measures in place and his responsible coverage throughout this crisis has reflected the need to take this seriously since January, before any other show on television started covering it in earnest,” Fox News said in a statement.Video posted by Brazilian outlet Poder360 shows Carlson shaking hands with Bolsonaro—who has denied testing positive for the virus after South American media reported he had—after President Trump introduced the two men during the visit at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Fábio Wajngarten, Bolsonaro’s press secretary who has since tested positive for COVID-19, stands close behind the pack as Trump, the Brazilian president, and Vice President Mike Pence in the video, while Trump sings Brazil’s praises under its new right-wing leader.While many of his Fox News colleagues have spent the past few weeks downplaying the viral outbreak, Carlson has stood out on Fox’s primetime airwaves as a voice of caution, repeatedly warning his viewers to take the pandemic seriously. Notably, he called out both Trump and his own Fox colleagues—without specifically naming them—for “minimizing” the threat of the coronavirus in order to protect political interests.“People you trust, people you probably voted for have spent weeks minimizing what is clearly a very serious problem,” he warned viewers on Monday. “The Chinese coronavirus is a major event. It will affect your life. And by the way, it's definitely not just the flu.”Carlson’s grave tone was in stark contrast to some of his colleagues like Fox Business Network host Trish Regan who insisted the pandemic is nothing more than an “impeachment scam” by the Democrats to “destroy and demonize” Trump. Regan’s monologue aired at the exact same time as Carlson’s pleas for viewers to take the outbreak seriously.While neither Trump nor Pence have self-quarantined after coming into contact with Bolsonaro and his entourage, other prominent attendees of the Mar-a-Lago visit have taken precautionary measures since learning of the infected Brazilian official.While Republican Sens. Rick Scott and Lindsey Graham both do not recall ever directly touching Wajngarten during the Brazilian delegation’s meetings with Trump, Pence, and their allies, both men self-quarantined as a result of the encounter.Miami Police confirmed that a 21-officer escort for Bolsonaro and his entourage have also self-quarantined, and the city’s mayor on Friday confirmed he tested positive for the virus after meeting with the delegation.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

President Trump is as scared of running against Joe Biden as he is of running. The question is, why? One reason he fears Biden is because Biden is like him. He's old, gets confused, mispronounces words, forgets things, and makes gaffes. But attacking him for these things invites the obvious response: "He sounds a lot like you!"Indeed, Trump can't attack Biden without attacking himself. Biden's weaknesses magnify Trump's, which are far worse. There's nothing that Biden does that Trump doesn't do worse. Biden has been touchy with women; Trump has been criminal with women. Biden has hair plugs; Trump has something worse. Biden said Barack Obama was "articulate." Trump said Obama was Kenyan.Trump hasn't addressed any of these yet. Instead, he is focusing on Biden's mental acuity. "Sleepy Joe," Trump said last week, "he doesn't even know where he is or what he's doing or what office he's running for. Honestly, I don't think he knows what office he's running for."In typical narcissistic fashion, Trump is projecting his flaws onto his opponent. He did this in 2016 when he attacked Hillary Clinton for running a fraudulent charity and risking state secrets. When Clinton said Trump was Vladimir Putin's "puppet" in a debate, Trump shot back, "You're the puppet!" Which was unconvincing. By parroting Clinton's accusation, he effectively confirmed it. Trump's team learned a valuable lesson from that: Always accuse your opponent of that which you are guilty — and do it before he or she accuses you. With Biden, Trump is shouting "You're the puppet!" preemptively.Trump began the week by tweeting, "The Obama/Biden Administration is the most corrupt Administration in the history of our Country!" To paraphrase Dragnet, the names have been changed to protect the guilty.This is the downside to the preemptive strike: Every projection is a confession of guilt.The Republican Party is smearing Biden by likening him to Trump. Steve Guest, the RNC's rapid response director, tweeted: "Joe Biden confuses who his wife is and who his sister is during Super Tuesday speech." Unlike Trump, who confuses his daughter for his mistress.Donald Trump Jr. said that Biden's "family fortunes" were "totally tied to him being in elected office." The next day, he tweeted, "It's almost like the whole Biden family is entity [sic] dependent on Joe holding public office?" It's almost as if Donald Trump Jr. became a best-selling author because the RNC bought copies of his book in bulk during his father's presidency.On Tuesday, Eric Trump said, "If my father was making the same gaffes as he was, they would literally invoke Article 25 of the uh," by which he meant the U.S. Constitution.This is the document Trump swore to uphold and hasn't read. Among the parts he hasn't read, he hasn't read the impeachment clauses the most. At a rally in North Carolina this month, Trump said that Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Pete Buttigieg "should be impeached." Trump is the third president to be impeached and the first president who, after being impeached, doesn't know how impeachment works.Trump reveals his ignorance every time he speaks, which is too often. Last year, he said, "When I say something that you might think is a gaffe, it's on purpose. It's not a gaffe." Two days later, Trump said that one of America's "greatest strides" was the "abolition of civil rights." It's somehow just as unsettling for the president to declare his opposition to civil rights by accident as it is on purpose, and it's equally plausible.In an interview on Fox Business in 2017, Trump managed to recount the details of a cake he was eating while launching missiles, but not which country he was attacking. Trump, who claimed to have "one of the best memories in the world" and then forgot he said that, says Biden has a deficient memory.He does. On Tuesday, Biden, discussing guns, mistakenly said "AR-14" instead of "AR-15." This was the same day that Trump, asked about the coronavirus, said, "I've been briefed on every contingency you could possibly imagine. Many contingencies. A lot of positive. Different numbers. All different numbers. Very large numbers, and some small numbers too, by the way."This is how Trump speaks: He uses a lot of words to say nothing at all. His mouth is always open and his mind is always closed."Have you ever seen a national candidate or nominee stumble over so many words and putting sentences together?" Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) asked. "I think he's really struggling. I think Trump will make mincemeat of him in a debate."Paul has a point. It's hard to rebut Trump's statements. That's because it's hard to understand them.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com Trump reportedly rejected aggressive coronavirus testing in hopes it would help his re-election Trump reportedly set to declare coronavirus a national emergency The entire country of Norway is 'shutting down'

Sean Hannity used his syndicated talk-radio program Wednesday to share a prediction he had found on Twitter about what is really happening with the coronavirus: It's a "fraud" by the deep state to spread panic in the populace, manipulate the economy and suppress dissent."May be true," Hannity declared to millions of listeners around the country.As the coronavirus spreads around the globe, denial and disinformation about the risks are proliferating on media outlets popular with conservatives."This coronavirus?" Rush Limbaugh asked skeptically during his Wednesday program. "All of this panic is just not warranted."The Fox Business anchor Trish Regan told viewers Monday that the worry over coronavirus "is yet another attempt to impeach the president."Where doctors and scientists see a public health crisis, President Donald Trump and his media allies see a political coup afoot.Even on Wednesday night, after Trump gave an unusually somber address to the nation in which he announced he was suspending all travel from Europe for 30 days, Hannity criticized Democrats and vigorously defended the president's response to the crisis, saying that when he instituted travel restrictions on China more than a month ago, "no president had ever acted that fast."Distorted realities and discarded facts are now such a part of everyday life that the way they shape events like impeachment, a mass shooting or a presidential address often goes unmentioned.But when partisan news meets a pandemic, the information silos where people shelter themselves can become not just deluded but also dangerous, according to those who criticize conservative commentators for shedding any semblance of objectivity when it comes to covering the president."This sort of media spin poses a clear and present danger to public health," said Charlie Sykes, a longtime conservative host and author who published a book, "How the Right Lost Its Mind," in 2018. "If you have people out there who feel all of this is overblown, and feel the need to act out their lack of concern by not taking precautions, it could be exceptionally dangerous."That's not just a problem for the right wing, that becomes a real threat to the general population," added Sykes, who is also a contributor to MSNBC. "When people start dying, the entertainment value wears off."In the case of Fox News viewers and talk radio listeners, who tend to be older than the general population, the danger of playing down the threat is potentially far worse. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has specifically identified older people as being at higher risk from serious complications if they contract the virus. Nielsen, the TV ratings agency, lists the average age of a Fox News viewer as 65 years old.Despite Hannity's own skeptical commentary, his Tuesday show featured Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as a guest. He told Hannity that he wanted to "make sure" viewers knew that the coronavirus "is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu -- you got to make sure that people understand that."It was not difficult to see why Fauci would think Hannity's roughly 4 million viewers -- the biggest audience in cable news -- might not understand. On Tuesday, the star anchor told his viewers, effectively, to relax."Sadly, these viruses pop up time to time," Hannity said, with the certitude of a medical professional. "Pandemics happen, time to time."Limbaugh has offered clinical advice of his own. Recently he defended his widely criticized comparison of the coronavirus to the common cold and suggested the timing of the coverage of the outbreak raised "a gigantic series of question marks and red flags."And not all the prominent players in conservative opinion are denying the seriousness of the threat. Disagreement on the right has spilled into public view in a way that is unusual, given how swiftly dissent is often punished by Trump and his media loyalists."It's a matter of public health. How can these shills face their followers after all the lies and deceit?" asked Michael Savage, the radio host and author who was one of Trump's earliest supporters in conservative media and urged him to run for president in 2011."Are these mouthpieces without any social conscience?" added Savage, who called the words of Limbaugh and others "criminal negligence."Speaking on his Monday Fox News show, Tucker Carlson seemed to speak directly to skeptics like the president and Hannity, whose prime-time program follows his. "People you trust, people you probably voted for, have spent weeks minimizing what is clearly a very serious problem," Carlson said, adding: "People you know will get sick, some may die. This is real."Trump pays close attention to Carlson's show, and the two are in regular contact by phone. Earlier this year, the anchor was credited with helping persuade the president to dial back his hawkish approach on Iran -- and Carlson's words on the virus this week were interpreted as a message aimed at the White House.There are also signs that political views affect how seriously someone takes the public health risk posed by the virus.A Reuters poll last week found that roughly 4 in 10 Democrats believed the coronavirus was an imminent threat -- but only 2 in 10 Republicans felt the same way. And Americans who approve of the way the president is handling his job are far more likely to believe that the government can stop a nationwide epidemic from occurring than those who disapprove, the poll said.Seventy-nine percent of those who gave Trump high job approval ratings said they were very or somewhat confident in the government's ability to prevent the outbreak from becoming much worse, compared with only 39% of those who disapprove of him, according to a CNN poll conducted last week.At times, there has been a jarring split screen between the president's nonchalance and the sober warnings of the nation's top health officials, who have been more aggressive about warning certain vulnerable populations not to travel.Asked Wednesday at the White House what he had to say to those concerned he is not taking the situation seriously enough, Trump offered a tart, terse reply: "Fake news," the president snapped, before dismissing reporters from the room.The fallout from the president's handling of the crisis might have been more easily dismissed as liberal, anti-Trump paranoia if not for an improbable twist of events. A person infected with the coronavirus attended one of the conservative world's biggest annual gatherings last week, the Conservative Political Action Conference, leading some politicians like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to voluntarily quarantine themselves.Before this person's status was made public -- he was a VIP attendee who purchased a $5,750 "gold" package that granted him access to backstage reception rooms where members of Congress and other high-profile figures mingled -- conservatives at the conference were accusing the president's enemies of inflating the seriousness of the outbreak.The former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, speaking from the conference stage last Friday, insisted falsely that the media had only just started paying attention to the coronavirus after the impeachment trial ended. And the reason, he added, was "they think this is going to be what brings down the president."But over the next few days, CPAC's organizers were pelted with questions from fellow conservatives, some of whom said they shook the infected guest's hand, about why they had been left in the dark.Suddenly the "hoax," as Hannity and others have called the response to the virus, hit home.Raheem Kassam, a former Breitbart News editor, was one of several conservative activists who attended CPAC and expressed frustration about how the group handled the incident. Kassam, who said he felt sick over the weekend and on social media chronicled his frustrated attempts to obtain a coronavirus test, knew that he might have been exposed only after someone who works in the office of a member of Congress who was also exposed contacted him."I think there's a grown-up conversation to be had about what happened," Kassam said in an interview, adding that he did not believe that some conservatives wanted to have that conversation now. "Imagine being that sick, and then finding out why I might be that sick in a thirdhand way. I was angry. I was frustrated. I was scared," he added.But the president's allies have attacked Kassam, accusing him of sowing panic when there are no other known cases to come out of the conference.Matt Schlapp, president of CPAC, who has sequestered himself at home because he also shook the infected attendee's hand, appeared on Fox News in recent days to malign the media for exaggerating the threat.And though he acknowledged in a subsequent interview that he had no medical training, he has made claims about the coronavirus and its apparent lack of contagiousness."It's actually hard to get," he said on Fox News on Wednesday, speaking via Skype from his home, where he still has a few days left in his self-imposed quarantine.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

For close to four hours this past weekend, a cropped video that appeared to show Joe Biden endorsing Donald Trump gained steam on Twitter before the Biden campaign publicly pushed back. Twitter eventually deemed it misleading, but by the time the post was labeled as such, it had already been viewed millions of times. Though the Biden campaign defended its handling of the video, the episode has nevertheless sparked fears in Democratic circles and beyond about its ability to navigate the fast moving world of online politics, where disinformation can shape conversations before the true version is known.“They’ve got to do something. You can’t surrender the ground,” said Clint Watts, a research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “We already know what the conspiracy is going to be. There’s going to be tons of disinformation out there. People tend to believe that which they see first and that which they see the most. If you can’t stop them from seeing it, you’ve got to be out there.”The video in question was taken from a rally Biden held in Kansas City, Missouri on Saturday. Posted at 8:18 p.m by Dan Scavino, President Trump’s social media adviser, it showed Biden appearing to stumble over his words before settling on: “we can only re-elect Donald Trump.” In reality, Biden said nothing of the sort. A fuller video showed him saying “we can only re-elect Donald Trump if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here. It’s gotta be a positive campaign, so join us.”  But for those looking on Twitter, the fuller video was not easy to find. Instead, the cropped version was amplified by Biden’s opponents. Trump retweeted it to his 73.5 million followers (“I agree with Joe!”) and other Trump-supportive conservatives, as well as some liberal-minded Biden opponents, followed suit. It would take the Biden campaign until just after midnight the next day to push back on the misleading version that Scavino had put out. Not only that, the campaign farmed out some of the fact-checking responsibilities to others. It was the Democratic National Committee that flagged the video to Twitter, the party committee told The Daily Beast, as part of their program to clamp down on the spread of disinformation in 2020. “This is an example of our ongoing disinformation work, and the same thing that we do for every campaign,” a DNC official said, adding that they “flag activity to each of the campaigns, and have set them up with tools to receive regular activity alerts themselves.”Speaking to The Daily Beast about their disinformation strategy, a Biden campaign adviser said that their more publicly hands-off approach was by design. The campaign, the adviser said, is partially relying on—and working with—reporters to police content that they flag for being inaccurate or misleading, as part of an “earned media” approach towards correcting disinformation. That strategy, according to the campaign, helped lead to Twitter, and eventually Facebook, labeling the video as either "manipulated media" or “partly false information” in what the campaign trumpeted as a first.“We and others took action on a fact-checking front in the press and in terms of directly appealing to Twitter,” the Biden campaign adviser said. “We lifted content online that showed it was false, from the media and generated by ourselves, in order to help achieve a drumbeat.”Indeed, one of the earliest forms of pushback to the video came from Biden’s response director, Andrew Bates, who tweeted “why am I not surprised?” at 12:05 a.m. on March 8 in response to a comment from freelance writer Bill Scher about the clip being “disinfo from the Trump campaign.” But Watts said their approach is unlikely to be sufficient come November. “I understand the credible messenger thing, but I don’t know if it works in this case,” he said. “The truth is a credible message. I feel like you’ve got to knock a lot of those things down. I think it’s a capability they need to have other than just hoping journalists catch it.”And other Democratic operatives who worked on opposing campaigns in the presidential primary said they were disheartened by how slow Biden’s operation moved to clear away any ambiguity that the cropped video may have raised. “You should respond quickly,” said a senior communications official on a former campaign. “It isn’t rocket science!” Another former senior communications aide added that if they faced a similar type of attack from the Trump campaign, they would have “responded to that within 15 minutes.”* * *Problems like these are not a new phenomenon when it comes to campaigns. Rumor, innuendo, and smear are as old as politics itself and have proven effective at swaying elections. In 2004, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) had his war credentials questioned so effectively that an entire genre was named after the character assassination. Every Democratic candidate since has pledged not to be “swift-boated.” And each has set up war rooms and websites meant to push  back against such attacks in real time. What has posed problems, in recent cycles, is not just the speed with which disinformation has traveled but the ability for people to spread it without ever revealing who they are. “I am less worried about things they are tweeting out because everyone can go and dunk on them,” said Zac Petkanas, a senior campaign adviser who ran Hillary Clinton’s rapid response effort four years ago. “It’s stuff that’s going to be pushed out with no fingerprints that’s more concerning. That’s the stuff that has real consequences.”Biden’s team has certainly had time to prepare. During the height of the Senate impeachment trial, when the former vice president’s son Hunter was being targeted by Trump on a daily basis, they did not set up a  war room to counter the smears. Instead, as The Daily Beast previously reported, they relied on existing infrastructure that they had used throughout the campaign to push back. The attention dipped after then, with Biden fading in the polls. But his campaign resurrection has brought with it both a heightened amount of scrutiny and a new barrage of interest from Trump and his allies. And it’s raised questions about whether Biden, his team, and the Democratic Party writ large need to rethink their approach. “There’s a larger question about whether we are prepared to deal with the onslaught of disinformation and misinformation,” said Petkanas. “The answer to that is unequivocally no, we are not.”Academics say there’s little clarity for campaigns on best practices to deal with these efforts.  David Rand, an expert on misinformation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said there's not a clear answer on when rebuttal is effective versus when it's amplifying."It doesn't seem crazy to me to say, wait till it starts taking off because a correction is unlikely to really like nip in the bud," Rand said. "In that a lot of people that are sharing it are sharing it because they think it's funny or because they don't like Biden or whatever, and not because they necessarily think it's true. In that, I'm sure that there's a lot of people, certainly people that are either pro-Trump or pro-Bernie that would strategically share it, even after knowing that it wasn't true."Saturday's situation was more of the low stakes variety, said Leticia Bode, a professor at Georgetown University focusing on misinformation, and there is a danger for campaigns to get bogged down in dealing with it. "I think it really depends on the piece of misinformation," Bode said. "...I don't think that this is going to change the election, right? I don't think anyone is not voting for Biden because of this clip. I don't think anybody is voting for Trump because of this clip. So because it is so low stakes, I think that the campaign doesn't want to get bogged down in continuing this news cycle." Still, the efforts have been ongoing and are likely to ramp up as the general election nears. When Biden launched his presidential bid nearly a year ago, the president indicated “it will be nasty,” adding, “I only hope you have the intelligence, long in doubt, to wage a successful primary campaign.” Contemplating what’s at stake for Democrats, Biden campaign's approach to Saturday was "poor form," said Phil Cowdell, president of the consulting division at The Soufan Group who specializes in the weaponization of information."In my belief you have to take control of your own destiny and you have to have your own scenarios and defense planned," he said. "...You can't rely on a third party to take care of business.""If they're not ready now and they can't deal with something as sort of simple as a Scavino tweeting something with a selective edit,” Cowdell added. “I think they're going to be very vulnerable to the escalation level of attacks that we're anticipating.” Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

NBC News analyst Claire McCaskill is talking about some of the shows on which she appears — “Morning Joe,” Rachel Maddow or Nicolle Wallace's hours — when a questioner slips in a little test: What's your favorite? Clearly, the political instincts of the former Democratic senator from Missouri haven't dulled since her defeat in 2018. McCaskill said Trump's impeachment lawyers had learned “the Trump ethos, which is if you're cornered, just lie” and sharply rebuked Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee on the air.

An appeals court has ruled that the Justice Department has to provide Congress with some secret grand jury evidence from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in favor of House Democrats who are suing to access redacted material from the Mueller probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election as they continue to investigate President Trump, The Washington Post reports. This upholds a lower court ruling. Previously, Judge Beryl Howell ruled in October that the Department of Justice needed to hand over the grand jury material to Congress. Since then, President Trump was acquitted in the Senate's impeachment trial that centered around his push for Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, though CNN notes the House has said it "could still consider impeaching Trump again because of his actions during the Mueller investigation." The Associated Press writes that Tuesday's decision on the grand jury information "softens the blow" for Democrats of the court recently deciding not to force former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify before Congress. The Post notes, though, that Tuesday's ruling is "unlikely to be the final word" on this issue, as it "can be appealed to the full court or to the Supreme Court." More stories from theweek.com Trump's former pandemic adviser: 'We are 10 days from our hospitals getting creamed' After finding piles of portraits in an abandoned studio, man finds a way to get them to rightful families A Seattle lab uncovered Washington's coronavirus outbreak only after defying federal regulators

Fox Business host Trish Regan has claimed that criticism of Donald Trump over Covid-19 is an attempt to impeach the president.Ms Regan, who hosts “Trish Regan Primetime” on Fox Business started her show on Monday night by attacking those criticising Trump’s handling over the pandemic.

Trish Regan says media is using virus to ‘destroy’ president while fellow host Tucker Carlson asks Trump to ‘tell the truth’ * Shifting guidelines on treatment in US could be ‘catastrophic’Criticism of Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus outbreak is “yet another attempt to impeach the president”, the Fox Business host Trish Regan said on Monday night – even as, on Fox News, so-called Trump-whisperer Tucker Carlson seemed to appeal directly to the president to “tell the truth” about the gathering crisis.Covid-19 is a respiratory illness transmitted by coughs, sneezes and physical contact that is spreading around the world. It can be fatal, particularly among the elderly and infirm. On Monday, figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) put the number of US cases at 423, in 35 states and Washington DC and with 19 deaths. Other estimates were higher.The Trump administration has been criticised for a scattergun response including insufficient testing and cuts to key authorities which handle public health crises.Trump himself has been criticised for playing down the severity of the outbreak, for making false claims about the nature of the virus and for politicising the problem – in part by repeatedly claiming his opponents and the media are politicising it.On Fox Business, Regan launched a full-throated defense of Trump. A “chorus of hate”, she said, “being leveled at the president is nearing a crescendo as Democrats blame him and only him for a virus that originated halfway around the world.“This is yet another attempt to impeach the president and sadly it seems they care very little for any of the destruction they are leaving in their wake. Losses in the stock market, all of this, unfortunately are just part of the political casualties for them.”Monday saw massive falls in US stock markets, the worst since the 2008 financial crisis.“You know,” Regan said, “this is a time to be united, not to be pointing fingers, not to be encouraging hate. And yet what do we see? We see the absolute opposite from the left tonight.“… The hate is boiling over, many in the liberal media using … coronavirus in an attempt to demonise and destroy the president.”The show then cut to a montage of media figures – and Joe Biden, Trump’s likely challenger in November – criticising the president, some suggesting this could be Trump’s Katrina, a reference to the hurricane which in 2005 devastated both New Orleans and the reputation of George W Bush.“I see,” Regan said. “This is impeachment all over again. And like with the Mueller investigation, like with Ukrainegate, they don’t care who they hurt.”Last week, Trump himself drew a parallel between the coronavirus outbreak and his impeachment. In a much-criticised visit to CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Trump said coronavirus tests administered by federal authorities were “all perfect like the letter was perfect, the transcription was perfect”.That was a reference to a White House version of a call with the Ukrainian president which Trump claims shows he did not apply improper pressure to investigate his political rivals but which most observers say in fact shows the opposite.But, perhaps reflecting splits on the right of American politics in the face of coronavirus, Carlson took a different tack. On his Monday night show, Carlson, who is known to have Trump’s ear, told viewers coronavirus presented a “very serious problem”.“People you trust, people you probably voted for, have spent weeks minimising what is clearly a very serious problem,” he said. “‘It’s just partisan politics,’ they say. ‘Calm down. In the end this was just like the flu and people die from that every year. Coronavirus will pass.’”Trump has repeatedly claimed coronavirus is comparable to or less serious than the common flu – claims rebuffed by public health experts.“They may not know any better,” Carlson said. “Maybe they’re just not paying attention, or maybe they believe they’re serving some higher cause by shading reality … and there’s an election coming up. Best not to say anything that might help the other side. We get it.“But they’re wrong … It’s definitely not just the flu.”Carlson also seemed to address Trump directly, saying that instead of “assuring people that everything will be fine”, it was “better to tell the truth. That is always the surest sign of strength.”Many observers think a global recession is likely.On Tuesday morning the Fox News host Laura Ingraham tweeted: “Fact: Some prominent people on the left, trying to frame this is Trump’s Katrina, will be disappointed when US stocks bounce back today. Those aren’t people you want running the country next year.”

Fox News host Tucker Carlson appeared to take aim at both President Donald Trump and many of his Fox News colleagues—without naming them, of course—on Monday night for downplaying the impact of the growing coronavirus outbreak, calling the epidemic a “very serious problem.”Carlson kicked off his primetime Fox News program by highlighting the latest number of reported coronavirus cases in the United States, noting that the real number of Americans infected is “without question far higher” and that we’ll soon “have a better sense of just how much higher.”With the Dow Jones suffering a record drop on Monday, the Fox News host pointed out that it won’t be long before the outbreak will cause economic damage that will last for years. He then took issue with those on the right who have minimized the spread of the disease for partisan purposes.After mocking the left for complaining about racist reactions to the virus due to its origin in China—all while simultaneously airing a graphic that blared “The Chinese Coronavirus”—Carlson added the “other side has not been especially helpful either.” (The Fox host has made a habit recently of claiming that “wokeness” and “identity politics” will leave Americans vulnerable to the virus.)“People you trust, people you probably voted for, have spent weeks minimizing what is clearly a very serious problem,” he asserted. “‘It’s just partisan politics,’ they say. ‘Calm down. In the end this was just like the flu and people die from that every year. Coronavirus will pass. And when it does, we will feel foolish for worrying about it.’ That’s their position.”Since the outbreak began making headlines and affecting the stock market weeks ago, both the president and several of his most loyal Fox sycophants have insisted repeatedly that Democrats and the media are overstating and sensationalizing the novel coronavirus in an attempt to hurt Trump politically ahead of the 2020 election. Just hours before Carlson’s monologue, Trump compared the virus to the “common flu” while insisting the “Fake News” was stoking unwarranted fears to tank the market.Carlson, meanwhile, said that while “these people have good intentions” and “maybe they believe they are serving some higher cause by shading reality,” they are wrong as the disease is a “major event.” He went on to note that the mortality rate of COVID-19, especially among those who are older, is far worse than the seasonal flu before pointing to how the outbreak has effectively shut down Italy.Carlson also took aim at Trump’s announcement that he is looking at possible payroll tax cuts and other stimulus efforts to offset any damage to the economy, noting that “tax cuts and lower rates won’t reopen factories that have shut down to contain the virus.”“In other words, our country is likely to experience a painful period we are powerless to stop,” the Fox host said. “You shouldn’t panic. In crisis, it’s more important than ever to be calm.”“Staying calm is not the same as remaining complacent,” Carlson continued. “It does not mean assuring people that everything will be fine. We don’t know that. Instead, it’s better to tell the truth. That is always the surest sign of strength. As they level with us, our leaders ought to prepare the public for what may come next.”While Carlson was speaking, over on Fox Business, host Trish Regan began her show by describing the crisis as the “coronavirus impeachment scam.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

Republican Matt Gaetz turned heads last week when he wore a gas mask during a coronavirus vote in CongressTwo Republican congressmen who were in close contact with Donald Trump in recent days have self-quarantined over concerns that they were also in contact in the same period with a known carrier of the coronavirus.Republicans Matt Gaetz of Florida and Doug Collins of Georgia announced on Monday that they had begun two weeks of self-imposed isolation, as recommended by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for anyone who has come into contact with the virus. Both congressmen said they were asymptomatic.Gaetz flew with Trump on Air Force One from Orlando to Washington on Monday and was informed en route that he had come into contact with a virus carrier at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland last month.“While the congressman is not experiencing symptoms, he received testing today and expects results soon,” said a message posted to Gaetz’s Twitter account.Collins greeted Trump with a handshake at an airport in Atlanta on Friday before the two visited the CDC headquarters for an update on coronavirus. Collins subsequently learned that he also had been potentially exposed at the conservative conference, held each year in Maryland.> Per pool report: "Matt Gaetz was also seen boarding via front steps.”@mattgaetz was on AF1 with Trump today from Orlando to DC/.> > — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) March 9, 2020Health experts have warned that coronavirus is expected to spread widely in the United States and have encouraged vulnerable populations, including the elderly and those with underlying illnesses, to stay at home as much as possible. Dozens of deaths from the virus have been recorded in the United States out of hundreds of confirmed cases, but rates of testing have been low.The White House denied on Monday reports that it had issued internal guidelines, as many organizations have, seeking to limit daily personal contact in an attempt to discourage the spread of the virus.Trump has falsely claimed the virus is “contained” in the United States and accused the media and Democrats of exaggerating the threat it poses, in an effort to hurt him. The virus is not contained.> From earlier today, Rep. Matt Gaetz exits the Beast with President Trump and then boards Air Force One. pic.twitter.com/GfTEhI4UMx> > — Jeremy Art (@cspanJeremy) March 9, 2020Trump did not respond to a question shouted by reporters Monday about whether he had been tested for the virus.In a news conference Monday, Pence said he did not know whether Trump has been tested. “I just simply don’t know what the White House physician has recommended to the president,” Pence said. “We’ll let you know tonight.”Gaetz and Collins were two of Trump’s most vocal supporters during the impeachment hearings and trial.Gaetz had worn an enormous gas mask last week during a House floor vote on an emergency funding package for the coronavirus response, but he later faced widespread condemnation when one of his own constituents died from the illness.Gaetz and Collins join fellow conservative politician Ted Cruz, who is also in self-quarantine. The Texas senator had attended the same event and met the same infected person.