Opinion: It's Time to Talk About the Media's/Democrats' Culpability in Coronavirus Spikes

Over the last 8 months, the mainstream media and Democrats have virtue signaled to the nth degree about how it was important to follow CDC guidelines on mask-wearing, social distancing, washing hands, staying home, etc. And anytime someone on the right – from President Trump on down, deviated even one iota from that mantra, they were labeled “grandma killers”, as greedy people who valued making money over saving lives, as self-centered individuals who put their personal wants ahead of the common good.

Anytime we’ve seen spikes in coronavirus cases, inevitably it is blamed on Republicans, starting with Trump, GOP Senators, and conservative commentators like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and moving to rank and file conservatives across America.

On the flip side of that, excuses are always made for Democrats and media figures who are caught breaking the rules they demand everyone else follow. As we saw after the George Floyd protests started, some in the media including their “medical expert” and “social justice leader” guests said the benefits of gathering for crowded, non-socially distanced “defund the police” protests in the middle of a pandemic outweighed the risks because woke leftist narratives and so forth.

This was, of course, in stark contrast to how Reopen protesters were treated by these same people. In their mind, Reopen marches were not a priority because protesting for the right to get back to work in order to provide for your family instead of starving and losing the business you worked your whole life to build was considered selfish and a danger to public health. These people were monsters in the eyes of Democrats and the media, so they had to be shamed.

But here we are now in, what, the second or third so-called coronavirus wave (I’ve lost count at this point), and the MSM and Democrats are doing the same thing they’ve done from the start. Blame conservatives for COVID spikes, and either demanding or outright mandating that Thanksgiving be all but canceled so as not to put people at risk. Some on the left have even outright said that they believe Republicans are deliberately trying to spread the virus.

What’s left out of all of the blame games the left loves to play with people is what role their rank hypocrisy has likely played in contributing to the spikes they play up for the cameras.

There was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s hair salon visit, her now-canceled House Democrat gala, and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s private birthday get-together at a trendy California restaurant. There have also been media figures like Chris Cuomo who have been repeatedly caught without a mask in spite of their mask lectures. ABC News reporter Jon Karl and CNN reporters Kaitlan Collins and Jim Acosta also frequently decry the lack of mask-wearing from members of the Trump administration but have also been caught not practicing what they preach when they think the cameras aren’t rolling.

If Republicans are supposedly to blame for why certain segments of the population allegedly don’t take the virus seriously enough, then Democrats and the media share equally in that culpability for reasons that should be obvious to everyone. Even people who have been diligent over the last several months in playing by all the rules see the hypocrisy on display.

Democrats can go to salons, private parties, protests, and all the rest without repercussions but when Republicans do the same all of a sudden we have to watch out for the possibility that case numbers will rise? It’s bull crap. Though individuals are ultimately responsible for their own actions and the decisions they make, they also see that the people who are the loudest in proclaiming we must sacrifice some of our freedoms in order to save lives are not doing much of the sacrificing.

It’s no wonder we’re seeing more defiance against lockdowns in states like California when you see the duplicitous behavior of “leaders” like Pelosi and Newsom. People are only going to put up with so much before they say “enough’s enough, if the rules don’t apply to you, they don’t apply to me either.”