Tucker: Experts are scrambling to avoid humiliation for their pandemic response
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host examines the failures of politicians and health experts on COVID-19
It was a year ago this week that Nancy Pelosi was walking the streets of San Francisco's Chinatown without any concern whatsoever for her personal safety. Nancy Pelosi's face was stark naked. She wasn't wearing a mask, neither were the dozens of people who surrounded her. Local CBS affiliate was on the scene following all of it.
But even the coronavirus was already spreading all over the world here in places like France and South Korea and we now know here in the U.S. CBS didn't suggest anything was amiss. They didn't report that Nancy Pelosi was a walking biohazard or a super-spreader. Why would they think that? Just days earlier Tony Fauci had gone on television and promised Americans that the risk of coronavirus infection in this country was ‘minuscule.’ So if Tony Fauci's word meant anything, at the time that people thought it did, Nancy Pelosi’s walk around Chinatown wasn’t alarming it was heroic.
As one CBS News reporter put it, "Nancy Pelosi was a walking one-woman tourist attraction on a mission to defeat a pathogen far more insidious than the coronavirus." Nancy Pelosi was in Chinatown to defeat racism against Asian-Americans. Pelosi herself was explicit on that point, "We want to see the people come to Chinatown here we are, we’re careful, we’re safe, come join us."
In other words if you are worried about catching the virus by gathering in a big crowd in Chinatown that means you are a white supremacist. So one year after that remarkable day what have we learned? Well, for one thing, we know that despite the best efforts, Nancy Pelosi did not succeed in extinguishing racism against Asians in San Francisco.
In fact, a year later, violence against Asian-Americans in San Francisco is at the highest rate ever. So if you are a reasonable person, you might call for an investigation into this. What is causing these attacks, how can we stop them? If you tune into CNN or MSNBC, you already know why they’re happening. Donald Trump.
Yes, the great orange menace may not be in the White House anymore. He may not have gotten any votes at all in San Francisco, but don't be fooled. Donald Trump is the reason this is happening. And that sends a larger message to the rest of us from our political class and their servants in the media. Never blame the people in charge.
That’s a familiar refrain, we’ve heard it a lot over the last 12 months. For the most part, it has worked, propaganda usually does. And that is why we’re going to spend the next hour highlighting politicians and the bureaucrats who have not been held accountable for what they did to this country during the pandemic. They have ruined lives, they’ve destroyed businesses, they caused people to die. But if you confront them on any of these questions, they will tell you reflexively it is somebody else's fault.
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No single politician has used this tactic more often or more shamelessly as the governor of New York State, Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo accepted an Emmy award last year for performances like these when the pandemic was beginning last spring.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY): Strategy, plan of action all along, step one, flatten the curve. // In other words we are all talking about this curve, flatten the curve. // We are trying to flatten the curve.// And we have to flatten the curve. // We reduce the rate, we so called flatten the curve, flatten the curve.
Flatten the curve, flatten the curve, we did, we’ve flattened the curve, boy that’s a great slogan but what does it mean exactly? What is flattening the curve? Well not many people bothered to ask that question. For New Yorkers last year, "Flatten the curve" became the new version of "15 days to slow the spread." Just a series of words arranged in order so politicians can repeat them over and over so politicians can repeat them over and over to convey the impression they were in charge and doing something to fix the problem.
In reality Andrew Cuomo spent most of his time sitting for interviews with his brother on CNN and having staffers write a book under his name. That book was called "American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic."
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We took a look at the top customer reviews for the book on Amazon.com, people who actually read it, here’s the top review right now, "A heartfelt and caring look how on how it feels to murder people through bureaucratic ineptitude."
Here’s the next review on Amazon.com at the moment, "Governor Cuomo’ self-serving book raises embarrassing questions, politicians being human make mistakes, Andrew Cuomo, as scientists agree made a serious error that led to thousands of necessary tragic death in nursing homes. Shouldn’t a politician like Cuomo have a moral obligation to admit his error even, as in this case, it is likely to lead him losing his position, his chance to be President of the United States and lawsuits?"
That is a good question. Doesn't he have a moral obligation to do that? As that reviewer noted, in March of last year, Andrew Cuomo ordered nursing homes in the state to admit patients who had tested positive for the coronavirus. Then Cuomo's administration hid the total number of nursing home deaths that resulted from that order. We are not speculating about that. One of his staffers admitted they did it. But Andrew Cuomo himself still has not acknowledged that he did this or any wrongdoing whatsoever. Instead last week he blamed the people who work in nursing homes.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo: Covid did not get into the nursing homes by people coming from hospitals. Covid got into the nursing homes by staff walking into the nursing home.
So case closed. I am not responsible for the 11,000 nursing home deaths in New York or the coordinated effort to cover up those deaths. You know who is responsible? The nurses, the receptionists making $35,000 a year. They must suffer. Their lives must be ruined so that Andrew Cuomo can keep his job and his Emmy award. But we don't mean to single out Andrew Cuomo.
He's not the only incompetent politician who needs to save face and will lie and hurt others in order to do it. Our public health experts are scrambling to avoid humiliation too and there is a lot of it waiting for them. If that means isolating the most vulnerable members of our society even more than they have already been isolated, then that is the cost. It is collateral damage. It’s a price they’re willing to pay because they don't pay it.
This is a real article published by NBC news earlier this month. It lays out word for word. We’re reading from it verbatim. "After grandparents or older parents receive the coronavirus vaccine, can you visit them? The answer is likely no, but it depends, one expert from Northwestern University said essentially ‘nothing changes after the vaccine.’" Again, nothing changes after the vaccine.
It is hard to believe they are saying this. And it's not just one so-called expert from Northwestern saying it. Tony Fauci himself is saying it too, "Until we have the overwhelming majority of people vaccinated and the level of virus is very low," Fauci said this month, you probably shouldn't visit your grandparents without your mask on. It’s just too early to be doing something that reckless, human contact with the ones you love most. Breaking people out of prisons of solitude, don’t dare even after the vaccine. Tony Fauci wants to take it slow.
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On the other hand, Fauci is still capable of acting very, very quickly as long as the right interests are involved, as long as he’s profiting from it or his allies are. We will give you one of many examples. Tony has already decided without hesitation whatsoever the World Health Organization deserves billions of your money right away, U.S. Tax dollars. The World Health Organization is the group that could have warned the rest of the world about the pandemic, could have saved lives, but chose instead to repeat Chinese propaganda instead. Your grandmother can wait, according to Tony Fauci, but bureaucrats at W.H.O.'s headquarters in Switzerland need the cash and they need it now.
Dr. Anthony Fauci: I join my fellow representatives in thanking the World Health Organization for its role in leading the global public health response to this pandemic. And as such, I am honored to announce that the United States will remain a member of the World Health Organization.
What a malignant buffoon. History will indict his behavior. So you are still waiting for your stimulus check. The W.H.O.’s not waiting for the money, they’re getting it. But it’s not just W.H.O. According to "The Daily Caller," the lab in Wuhan where this pandemic likely started, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, will continue to receive American taxpayer funding for the next several years. It is hard to believe that is real. It is. Tony Fauci himself has supported research at that lab. It is enough to blow your mind.
Again, the people responsible for this pandemic aren’t facing consequences instead they’re getting U.S. Tax dollars. The consequences fall where they always do on the American middle class. So if you unleash a deadly virus on the world or cause thousands of deaths in nursing homes or fail to warn the world in order to appease your masters in China, you get millions. But if you’re just a waitress in Brooklyn dealing with the fallout of all of this and you step out of line for a moment, you're done.
Good Morning America voiceover: The 34-year-old said she was fired after telling her employers she and her husband considering starting a family and she had hesitation about getting the covid-19 vaccine.
Reporter: Do you think it is fair for a workplace to determine whether or not its employee should be vaccinated?
Waitress: I don't, I don't. You know especially in a situation like mine. I asked for a little more time. That’s a very legitimate reason.
Yeah, this is someone who doesn't oppose vaccines. Who is thankful for vaccines, like most Americans, but who simply has questions. That’s the person who is suffering. Is that fair, no but it's happening everywhere. The people in charge of this country, your politicians, your bosses, the public health experts especially Bill Gates, all of a sudden they have more power than they've ever had, including over your personal life. Certainly over the lives of your children. They can't go outside or attend class in many states right now. But don’t worry, it's for their own good. Randi Weingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers, that’s the second largest teachers union in the country. She's not a doctor, not a scientist, she's a lawyer. But according to Randi Weingarten, medically speaking, your kid should not be anywhere near a school.
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Dan Primack, Axios on HBO: Is there a point in which kids have been out of physical, in-person school for so long that the education that they have lost is not really recoverable? That the third grade, the fourth grade, the kindergarten they lost, they can take extra some semesters in the summer, but it can't really be fixed?
Randi Weingarten: No, I don't believe that. I believe that kids are resilient and kids will recover.
Really, Randi Weingarten? How many kids do you have? Kids are resilient, they’ll recover. Yet another promise we’ve heard during this pandemic. Get the vaccine and your life will return to normal. That wasn't true. Why should we believe any of this is true? Who is going to be held responsible for these lies?