Once the coronavirus menace began dominating print and electronic news outlets, the front-running Democratic candidate for president wasn’t getting much media attention. About that, Joe Biden was very unhappy because he saw President Trump on the front pages of all the newspapers, and, worse for him, the man he seeks to unseat in November was giving live reports about the pandemic on all the nightly TV news programs. There wasn’t anything about Joe Biden who, it seemed, went away somewhere on an extended vacation.
Joe doesn’t like what is happening, especially being left out of the news. So, in an attempt to get some media coverage, he came across some damning information about President Trump’s handling of the current pandemic. He started to make some noise about it. But what he claimed turned out to be a complete falsehood.
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Someone close to Biden had informed him that President Trump had closed down a federal office created to deal with what might threaten the United States. The near-certain Democratic choice for president became overjoyed about the potential to hurt Donald Trump. All he had to do to gain some much-needed media attention was to accuse the president of having taken action that was now impeding efforts to fight the coronavirus. He could add to that the charge that what the president had done was harming the economy. Or so he thought.
So, on March 19, Biden told many fellow Americans via Twitter that the United States is “paying the price” of the coronavirus because President Trump “eliminated” an office that dealt with pandemics. The truth — as had been explained a few days earlier in the Washington Post by former National Security Council official Tim Morrison — was that the office being referred to had been combined with others in a reorganization that had no effect on its ability to function properly. Said LibertyBell.com, “the pandemic office wasn’t dismantled and tossed into the garbage can.”
Obviously, this bit of news about Joe Biden’s attempt to get some coverage isn’t getting much attention because it can’t be used to harm the president and help Joe defeat him in November. Had there been any truth to what Biden stated, it would have been big news everywhere. The fact that his claim was based on a falsehood should have been reported by more news outlets than the single Twitter piece that exposed it. It is exactly the kind of big news that would have gladly been used by the anti-Trump media, and it would have put Joe Biden back in news.
Interesting, too, is something else LibertyBell.com discovered. In 2009, then-Vice President Biden caused a near panic during the serious swine flu outbreak by telling the American people not to travel by air or even ride in the subways. There was a prompt shrinkage in airline customers and in people traveling via inner city rails.
Something else needs to be said here. It is that anyone truly concerned about the pandemic currently spreading throughout parts of America, would, as LibertyBell.com stated, not be attempting to make a political point out of what threatens all Americas. He might instead volunteer to help President Trump make our country safer from the disease. But expecting that of the former vice president seems like wishing for something that hasn’t got a chance in the world of happening.
John F. McManus is president emeritus of The John Birch Society.
