The Media's Trump-Coronavirus Narrative Is So Dishonest That Even Gavin Newsom Can't Play Along

Gov. Gavin Newsom discusses a report detailing the efforts by the DMV to improve customer services during a news conference in Sacramento, Calif., Tuesday, July 23, 2019. Some of the suggestions are to accept credit cards, upgrade the DMV’s website and offer clearer instructions on how to obtain a new federally mandated ID. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

If you had the Governor of California shunning the current hysteria being played up in the media over the Wuhan Flu, collect your winnings at the window.

When asked yesterday about how the response is going and how the federal government has helped, Gov. Gavin Newsom, one of the most liberal Democrats in the country, said that he’s gotten everything he’s asked for. This seemed to be a shock to the journalists reporting on it.

Newsom says that he had a "private conversation" with Trump and the president said everything Newsom "could have hoped for" and the administration has since followed through with what Trump said.

— Julia Wick (@sherlyholmes) March 8, 2020

Newsom declines to criticize the Trump administration's response to the #coronavirus. He says he's working closely with federal officials and praised VP Mike Pence's work handling the situation.

— Sophia Bollag (@SophiaBollag) March 8, 2020

This should be obvious to anyone paying attention. It’s fairly easy to ascertain that the Trump administration gains absolutely nothing from not doing everything they can to contain this strain of coronavirus. A president is never going to throw on a lab coat and actually go work at the CDC. He or she is also not going to manage quarantines. The truth is, whether some want to hear it or not, a president has very little control here except in his ability to rubber stamp protocols already in place.

But the desire to turn this into “Trump’s Katrina” is so pervasive that the media will literally say anything they feel frames things negatively for the administration. Good for Gavin Newsom for not playing along. At some point, facts have to matter. Reality rarely fits into our partisan bubbles, and though it’s usually just politics to try to force it to do so, we are dealing with a pandemic here. Some things should be above politicizing.