Opinion

Trump accuses mainstream media of ‘corrupt news’ over coronavirus coverage

'It's more than fake news. It's corrupt news. They write stories without calling anybody.'
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 Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Andrea
Widburg
Andrea Widburg

March 24, 2020 (American Thinker) — Chanel Rion, who is half-Korean, is the White House correspondent for One America Network (AKA OAN), an openly conservative news station. On Thursday, during President Trump’s now daily press briefing, she asked him why it was appropriate to use the phrase “Chinese Virus” when referring to the coronavirus.

President Trump seized the opportunity to say this was an accurate term and that the fake news media were parroting Chinese propaganda when they accused him of being racist. The mainstream media responded by doing everything short of falling on the fainting couch with smelling salts at the horror of it all — and then by demonstrating that they are, in fact, repeating the Chinese party line.

Rion’s question didn’t pull punches about her pro-American, anti-Chinese-communism bias. She first asked Trump whether the phrase “Chinese food” is racist. Trump, after noting that he likes OAN, agreed that the phrase isn’t racist at all.

Then Rion got to the heart of the matter:

On that note, major left-wing news media — even in this room — have teamed up with Chinese Communist Party narratives and they’re claiming you’re racist for making these claims about ‘Chinese virus.’ Is it alarming that major media players, just to oppose you, are consistently siding with foreign state propaganda, Islamic radicals and Latin gangs and cartels? And they work right here at the White House with direct access to you and your team?

Given an opening, Trump took it:

It amazes me when I read the things that I read. It amazes me when I read the Wall Street Journal, which is always so negative. It amazes me when I read the New York Times … it’s not even, I don’t, barely read it. You know, we don’t distribute it in the White House anymore and the same thing with the Washington Post. Because, you see, I know the truth. And people out there in the world, they really don’t know the truth, they don’t know what it is. They use different slogans and different concepts for me almost every week, trying to catch something. Last week it was all “chaos.” You see me. There’s no chaos. I have no chaos. I’m the one telling everybody to be calm. There’s no chaos in the White House. We have unbelievable professionals. It’s really — I mean, I think I came up with the term. I hope I came up with the term. But it is Fake News. It’s more than Fake News. It’s corrupt news. They write stories without calling anybody. They write a story today, they had a couple of stories, where they never call me. Ever. That I know of. At least, nobody tells me. They’ll write a story without even asking my opinion on something. It’s totally fake.

The media were shocked. Shocked! Brian “the human potato” Stelter exemplify the media’s all-out war on Trump:

And then, for America’s media, it was right back to parroting the Chinese government’s party line. The Washington Post angrily reported that Fox News is saying China is responsible for the pandemic:

NBC News, in its turn, reported that China, which is pure of heart, is terrified that an irresponsible America, as well as other nations, will re-infect it:

Trump is only partly right when he calls the mainstream media corrupt. They’re also disgusting. Tucker Carlson gives the media his famously deadly blank look as he discusses its anti-American dishonesty:

Published with permission from the American Thinker.