This is a commendable attempt to get the White House press corps to focus on what they are supposed to be doing, namely relaying to the American people the various updates and recommendations from the taskforce. Day after day, the Vice President would stand at the podium plaintively waving the little blue card containing the Coronavirus Guidelines for America, the quite simple list of common sense behaviors that every American is urged to take, to help slow the spread of the virus. He was hoping to get the press interested in helping to publicize the task force’s “15 Days to Slow the Spread” program.

No such luck. As soon as the question period started, all the reporters ever wanted to ask about was whether the President understood just how bad an Orange Man he was for referring to “the China virus.”

Well, that and trying to trick Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, into contributing to the press’ ongoing effort to fabricate “Expert Contradicts Trump” stories. Last week there were three separate Fauci Contradicts Trump “news” stories. I watched the first one unfold in real time. One day in his remarks, President Trump stated that the course of the virus “was under our control.” A bit later, responding to a question, Dr. Fauci said that “it depends on what we do.” When the briefing was over, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer described this as Fauci contradicting Trump.

All of this would be more tolerable if the press were actually keeping the public informed while conducting their political advocacy. But they are not. It is difficult to find anyone in a forum on a Blue Media site who knows where the impetus came from to try the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine on coronavirus patients. Most believe that Trump himself thought up the idea, or heard about it on 4chan. Most have no idea about the progress made in diagnostic testing since the commercial labs got involved. Many questioned why Trump would ban travel from Europe; so far as they knew, there was no coronavirus outbreak in Europe. They are thoroughly familiar with all the reasons why #OrangeManBad, but they do not know basic facts about the outbreak, or about what they should be doing to combat it.

Although a majority of the country no longer trusts the Blue Media to keep them informed, we still have a sizable minority of our citizens being blown around like patterns on a weather map according to the whims of the narrative engineers who decide what these people will be allowed to know. How such people can be expected to practice self-government is a mystery.