President Donald J. Trump participates in a video teleconference with governors to discuss a partnership to prepare, mitigate, and respond to the coronavirus outbreak Thursday, March 19, 2020, at the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

This morning, a story from an NBC “journalist” went viral in which she fairly explicitly tried to blame the President for two people ingesting fish cleaner, one of whom died. This was supposedly shown by the fact that Trump had previously touted promising reports from an anti-malarial drug that contains chloroquine.

My colleague, Brad Slager, has a write up for early today with the details.

👉Her husband is dead & she's in the ICU after ingesting chloroquine:

"We saw Trump on TV — every channel — & all of his buddies and that this was safe," she said.
"Trump kept saying it was basically pretty much a cure."

She implored @VaughnHillyard: "Educate the people" https://t.co/Vl94tIZcdw

— Heidi Przybyla (@HeidiNBC) March 23, 2020

Except they didn’t take “chloroquine.” They drank fish cleaner that contained a similarly named substance, not at all in the right form or dosage as a prescription medication. This is the equivalent of Trump telling people to wash their hands because they can harbor the virus, having someone cut their hands off in response, and then trying to blame Trump for warning people that people should wash their hands. It’s so ludicrous that it would be humorous if we weren’t in such tenuous times.

Meanwhile, the media set about to push the narrative that Trump was somehow to blame. In fact, they all started repeating the same talking point.

It’s safe to say the journos received their talking points this morning. #ToutedByTrump pic.twitter.com/k77COwVIqZ

— The Red-Headed Libertarian ™ (@TRHLofficial) March 24, 2020

Meanwhile, Axios gives us a glimpse into exactly how fake news is made and spread. They originally ran with the same talking point everyone else did, despite the fact that all the information on what happened was available at the time of the original report.

It took them 16 hours to issue a correction, after their tweet had been shared thousands of times.

We have deleted this tweet and corrected our story because it did not reflect the full nature of the self-medication done with an additive commonly used to clean fish tanks. https://t.co/0zucqRaIkI pic.twitter.com/3YY86rju2w

— Axios (@axios) March 24, 2020

Or you could have just said it was fish tank cleaner originally instead of collecting 4k retweets https://t.co/MHp0JqfU6p

— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) March 24, 2020

By the time the correction came, the story had already gone viral. At this very moment, clowns like Rick Wilson are still claiming Trump is responsible for the death in this case. Armies of left-wing trolls are pushing that narrative as well, unable to see the very obvious flaw in their argument.

That’s how fake news is made. Rush to put a false story out there, always meant to damage a Republican, and then “correct” it after the damage is already done. Is it really that hard to just check your reporting, to begin with? Apparently, it is. But we all know this isn’t just a “mistake.” These things always flow in one direction, pointing to the fact that they are purposeful.

This is why the media has no credibility anymore.