It seems Hillary Clinton not only believes the misleading media narrative that America “leads the world” in terms of coronavirus cases but she also appeared to celebrate that “fact” — just in order to mock President Donald Trump.
Madame Sour Grapes seized on the New York Times headline “The U.S. Now Leads the World in Confirmed Coronavirus Cases.”
“He did promise ‘America First,'” Hillary quipped.
He did promise "America First." https://t.co/bzks3hqCUE
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 27, 2020
Contrary to Hillary Clinton’s — clever? sadistic? — response, the Times claim is extremely misleading. The claim that America is “first” in terms of coronavirus cases relies on taking the Chinese Communist Party at its word that there have been no new cases after 80,000. Chinese journalists have pushed back on this propaganda, explaining that the government simply stopped counting new cases. People are still contracting the virus and dying from it — China is just working overtime to cover it up.
Iran’s reported numbers (33,000) are also not to be trusted, although it seems less likely that the Islamic Republic has more than the U.S.’s 94,000 cases.
However, even The New York Times has suggested that counting the sheer number of cases might be misleading. In a visual presentation entitled “Where the U.S. Stands Now on Coronavirus Testing,” the Times used whole numbers for confirmed cases on one side, and then used per capita numbers for testing on the other, likely to put the U.S. in a bad light, as PJ Media’s Matt Margolis noted.
On a per-capita basis, America is far from “first” in terms of cases or deaths. While the U.S. leads the top six countries in confirmed numbers from Johns Hopkins University — U.S. (94,238), Italy (86,498), Spain (64,059), Germany (49,344), Iran (32,332), France (29, 593) — it ranks dead last in per-capita terms — Italy (1,386.13 cases per million people), Spain (1,280.78), Germany (615.57), France (436.17), Iran (380.72), U.S. (283.30). In terms of coronavirus deaths per million people, America (4.32) ranks far below Italy (146.37), Spain (98.65), Iran (28), and France (25.03).
America was first in one thing, however. According to a Johns Hopkins study from late last year, the U.S. led the world in pandemic preparedness.
Hillary Clinton seized on a false media narrative to mock Trump’s “America First” slogan and policies. In doing so, she seemed to celebrate the fact that the coronavirus has spread far enough for her to use it as a political weapon against the man who bested her in 2016.
“Fully acknowledge I’m biased here, but my advice would be that if your politics are giving the impression that you’re rooting against your fellow Americans and for a deadly virus attacking them, you might want to reassess,” The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway tweeted.
Fully acknowledge I'm biased here, but my advice would be that if your politics are giving the impression that you're rooting against your fellow Americans and for a deadly virus attacking them, you might want to reassess. https://t.co/onc2q77JVg
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) March 27, 2020
Robbie Starbuck also responded to Clinton’s tweet. “You’re even more despicable than I thought. You’re parroting Communist China’s propaganda during a global crisis caused by China and the worst part is you’re doing it knowingly because you know better from your time in government. You know damn well China lied about their [numbers],” he tweeted.
You’re even more despicable than I thought. You’re parroting Communist China’s propaganda during a global crisis caused by China and the worst part is you’re doing it knowingly because you know better from your time in government. You know damn well China lied about their #’s.
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) March 28, 2020
I, for one, am happy this vile woman isn’t president right now.
Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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