OPINION:
It’s almost like there was a vaccination plan all along.
In September, then-President Trump said that by April, everyone in the country would be able to receive a coronavirus vaccination.
“Trump says, without evidence, every American will get coronavirus vaccine by April,” The Washington Post reported on Sept. 18.
“Trump says every American can get a coronavirus vaccine by April, but health experts say that’s not likely,” CNN echoed at the time.
“Top U.S. Health Officials Tiptoe Around Trump’s Vaccine Timeline,” The New York Times headline blared, adding: “The administration’s experts tried to find a way to support both the president and the reality of scientific and medical constraints he doesn’t always recognize.”
Flash forward, and the Biden administration on Tuesday announced that any adult in any state will be able to get a COVID-19 vaccination by April 19. Instead of our news media reporting that this was the plan all along, The Post ran the headline: “Biden accelerates timeline for adults to qualify for vaccines.”
What?
The Biden administration is infamous for setting expectations extremely low — announcing “ambitious goals” that are already part of a larger plan they inherited from the Trump administration and that are easily accomplishable.
The Biden White House had said May would be their vaccination target for all adults — but when they announced it, many states in the nation already said April was their timeline. Now they and the press are taking a victory lap — for something that was long-planned.
When President Biden entered office, he said he wanted to administer 100 million COVID-19 shots in his first 100 days, which he considered “ambitious.”
“Experts said that it was a — the plan was, quote, ‘definitely aggressive,’ and distribution would have to be ‘seamless’ for us to be successful,” Mr. Biden said in March of his vaccination timeline. “One headline simply put it, quote: ‘It won’t be easy.’ End of quote. Well, it wasn’t.”
The only problem? It was easy. When Biden set his timeline, the U.S. was already administering 1 million shots a day. When his administration reached their goal — not surprisingly before his 100th day in office — they acted as if it were a triumph, and the press, celebrated with them.
The Biden White House did the same with school reopenings, saying they wanted to reopen at least 50% of schools for in-class teaching at least one day a week in February. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said it was “not the ceiling, that is the bar we’re trying to leap over and exceed,” and that it was part of the Biden administration’s “bold and ambitious agenda for how we’re going to measure ourselves and progress.”
Another low-bar. When they announced it, their threshold had already been passed.
See a pattern here?
It wouldn’t be so outrageous if the Trump administration wasn’t treated differently. Instead of setting underwhelming goals, Mr. Trump shot for the moon and was largely mocked and criticized for it.
Remember when he said there would be a vaccination by the end of 2020?
“The president’s penchant for on-camera hyperbole has been a constant challenge,” Politico wrote last March, “… the stakes for his exaggerations have rarely been so high. Indicating that a cure might be around the corner may cause inadequate preparation for the possibility that the disease could spread more widely through the U.S.”
Mr. Trump was fact-checked by multiple news organizations, all claiming his vaccination goal was false, or as NBC News put it, he would need “a miracle to be right.”
The news media doubted Mr. Trump’s every move, actively seeking out “experts” that would rebuke his every statement. Turns out, many of those statements were true — but were reported as false at the time.
The news media helped elect Mr. Biden, so it shouldn’t come as a shock that their reporting on him is defensive and commemorative.
Our entire press is propaganda and if you’re not benefiting from it, you’re more likely to realize it. Only 10% of Republicans polled by Gallup responded that they trusted mass media “a great deal,” or a “fair amount,” compared to 73% of Democrats last year. The bias is so blatant and obvious to those on the right.
Yet, the former president is taking it all in stride.
Yesterday, Mr. Trump issued an “in case you missed it” statement with the headline, “Trump isn’t getting the proper credit for role in vaccines.” The first sentence in the statement was “Wow, so nice!”
So nice, indeed.
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