‘Instead of the Delta variant, why not call it the DeSantis variant?’ Acosta asked.
Welcome back to “Forgotten Fact-Checks,” a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we diagnose another few cases of DeSantis Derangement Disorder, consider the personnel decisions being made at CNN, and bring attention to more egregious media misses.
‘The DeSantis Variant’
Jim Acosta’s act has grown tired in the Biden Era. Nevertheless, the CNN reporter-turned-anchor persists in adopting every conventional liberal Twitter opinion and vilifying anyone who takes a more nuanced approach. Take his objections to Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s approach to pandemic policy-making, for example.
On Saturday, Acosta singled out DeSantis as being responsible for the increase of Delta-variant COVID cases in the country, proclaiming that “people should not have to die so some politicians can own the libs. They’re not owning anybody, but they may end up owning the pandemic, because they’re prolonging it.”
In particular, the always-shrill Acosta took issue with an executive order signed by DeSantis to keep mask mandates out of public schools in the Sunshine State. While Acosta pointed to rising caseloads as a reason not to do so, he was unable to draw a connection between mask-wearing in schools and spread, or even make an argument that schools were significant vectors of transmission in the first place.
“Instead of the Delta variant, why not call it the DeSantis variant?” he solemnly asked the camera.
It’s a nasty and ignorant question. The Delta variant is infecting people all around the world and country, and it certainly did not emerge in Florida, which continues to be a middle-of-the-pack pandemic performer as measured by deaths per capita, despite its being home to a disproportionate number of seniors.
It’s particularly aggrieving, though, when you consider Acosta’s history. Remember, he was vehemently opposed to naming the original coronavirus after the genocidal regime that quite possibly created it and undoubtedly contributed to its proliferation around the world.
Trump again calls Coronavirus the “Chinese virus.”
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) March 19, 2020
DeSantis Derangement Disorder may just prove more potent than its predecessor — and more politically damaging to those who suffer from it, to boot.
Priorities, Priorities
What the brass at CNN would give to have just one problematic personality on their plate. While New York governor Andrew Cuomo faces impeachment after a damning report from the state’s Democratic attorney general about his history of sexual misconduct, his brother Chris is fielding new questions about his role in helping the “Luv Gov” navigate these treacherous waters.
It had previously been reported that the CNN host of Primetime with Chris Cuomo had advised his brother as to how to respond to the allegations against him, but the report released last week revealed that Cuomo had not merely spoken to his brother on the matter, he drafted a statement on his behalf — one that was later released on the governor’s behalf with only a few minor adjustments.
CNN has not disciplined Cuomo for his failure to disclose his role in advising a major sitting politician, the preferential treatment he received after contracting COVID-19, or for breaking quarantine while he was still sick with it last spring.
Brian Stelter, the network’s resident media critic, asserted that “on the air, Chris has sounded protective of his brother at times; bitter about the political warfare at other times; and detached from it at other other [sic] times. Overall, I’d say, he sounded realistic about life as a member of his famous political family.” One is left to wonder what’s “political” about a multitude of credible sexual-assault allegations and a confirmatory investigation led by Democrats, as well as whether Stelter might feel differently about his colleague’s ethical breaches if he worked for another network.
After all, other CNN employees have not been so lucky. In an internal memo reported on by the New York Times, CNN president Jeff Zucker announced that “in the past week, we have been made aware of three employees who were coming to the office unvaccinated. All three have been terminated. Let me be clear — we have a zero-tolerance policy on this.”
Zucker has the right to instill and enforce any rules he wishes, but it would seem that they’re selectively enforced depending on who you are. When you’re a star at CNN, you can do anything, evidently.
Headline Fail of the Week
We previously criticized several news outlets in this space for shamefully embracing a formulaic genre of headline: “Man/Woman Who Mocked Vaccine Dies.” However, the mainstream media has not let go of this distasteful line of reporting. The New York Daily News published a story last week titled, “Texas politician dies of COVID 5 days after posting anti-vaccine meme.” Newsweek, the Washington Post, and the Daily Beast all reported the story with similar headlines as well.
Then, Ken Klippenstein, an investigative reporter at The Intercept, disgracefully reposted the story and shared a screenshot of one of the politician’s tweets from 2009 about private health care next to a GoFundMe for the family.
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) August 8, 2021
Media Misses
• Tom Nichols, a Lincoln Project alum and writer for the Atlantic, reacted to the AG report on Andrew Cuomo by — you guessed it — attacking Ron DeSantis. “Prepare for more ‘but Cuomo’ excuses now that he’s been investigated (and should resign), as the anti-anti-Trump folks try to excuse DeSantis and other GOP governors for killing thousands of people on the rationale that reigniting a pandemic is okay because Cuomo is a dirtbag,” Nichols wrote on Twitter. Apparently lost on him was the fact that his reaction to the Cuomo news was no more sophisticated than “but DeSantis.” We’ll also need a citation on the mass-murder accusation he so blithely levies.
• Joy Behar called DeSantis a “negligent homicidal sociopath” during an episode of The View last week after the Florida governor banned mask mandates in the state’s public schools. “Then this sociopath, this dangerous criminal, he tells schools that they will rescind funding if they insist upon a mask mandate,” Behar said. “What is he doing? What is he doing? He’s risking the lives of children, children’s parents, their grandparents, anyone they come in contact with so he can appeal to his white supremacist base and continue in his career and get reelected.”
However, while children under the age of twelve are not currently eligible to be vaccinated, National Review has previously reported that unvaccinated children have a lower risk of death or serious outcome from COVID-19 than vaccinated people in their 30s do.
• At the Bulwark, Charlie Sykes calls National Review’s David Harsanyi a member of the “Fascist-Curious Right” and misidentifies him as a writer for American Greatness. David’s never submitted copy to that publication — only one of his columns for National Review was ever republished on the site via syndication. What’s more embarrassing about Sykes’s writing is not the careless errors, though, but his demonstrated ignorance of the movement he claimed to be a part of for so long.
• Professional hysteric Keith Olbermann did not take well to a speech Senator Mike Braun gave in favor of fiscal responsibility, even going so far as to say that the state he represents should not have been admitted into the Union under Braun’s logic.
Hey, @SenatorBraun, for that matter the founders also never intended for there to be a State of Indiana pic.twitter.com/D3LMDwsxaM
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) August 9, 2021
Our own Charlie Cooke set that faulty argument ablaze.
This would have been news to James Madison, who not only wrote Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1, but who was president when Indiana was admitted and, thus, was required to sign the admissions act. https://t.co/TjkhwGQFli
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) August 9, 2021
• Last week CNN ran the story of a mother of three young children who was concerned about being evicted after the federal eviction moratorium lapsed. The network shared a GoFundMe for the woman that ultimately raised over $230,000. The feel-good story was based on a lie, however. The woman was not, in fact, the children’s mother, but the girlfriend of the children’s father.
While the woman, Dasha Kelly, was identified initially as a “single mother” who lost her job because of the pandemic and could no longer afford child care, it was ultimately revealed that the kids will return to live with their actual mother before the school year begins.
“Update: After CNN aired a story about her potential eviction, Dasha Kelly clarified to CNN that she is not the mother of the three children featured in the story. CNN has verified she takes care of the children in her home for periods of time. She says she originally described herself to CNN as a mother because she considers herself to be like one to them,” a correction affixed to CNN’s report reads.
• The Washington Post this weekend reported — as fact — that “the n-word was shouted multiple times from the stands Sunday at Denver’s Coors Field during a game between the Colorado Rockies and the Miami Marlins” while Lewis Brinson, who is black, was at the plate.
However, after the Colorado Rockies initially accused the fan of shouting the racial slur, the team backtracked on Monday, according to a local NBC affiliate. It turns out a fan was yelling the name of Rockies mascot “Dinger” the dinosaur. Rockies representatives spoke with the fan and confirmed his account by reviewing video of the incident.