Anti-Trump media outlets MSNBC and the New York Times spread the false story that Fauci was being muzzled by Vice-President Pence. “I have never been muzzled ever and I’ve been doing this since the administration of Ronald Reagan, I’m not being muzzled by this administration,” Fauci said. Watch.

A POS “reporter” tried to have a gotcha moment by asking @realDonaldTrump “Why have you been muzzling Doctor Fauci?

I dont think she realized Dr Fauci was right there🤣

"I’ve never been muzzled and I’ve been doing this since Reagan." Dr Fauci responded.”pic.twitter.com/jEBtJsbBBs

— Femme🇺🇸 (@RealBasedMAGA) February 29, 2020

Kurt Schlichter:

“…It is not a bad idea to take your opponents seriously, and anyone who gets a major party nomination can theoretically win. But if you look at someone like Bernie Sanders, a crusty anti-American weirdo who wants to take your money and give it to his doofus supporters, and you have to imagine that next year at CPAC, with Trump safely re-elected and the House back in our hands, we will be wondering what the hell the Democrats were thinking nominating Marxist Mondale.

Lots of Dem-leaning voters fashionably despise the president and enjoy their progressive posing, but Sanders actually believes the nonsense he’s spewing. He totally would take their doctors and SUVs, jack up their taxes, and hand them the bill for other people’s kids’ Oppression Studies degrees. Liberalism is all fine and dandy with them until they have to actually live it. Get ready for even more secret Trump voters as folks with fading “I’m With Her” stickers on their Teslas walk into the voting booth with their still-strong 401(k) numbers on their minds and flip the lever for The Donald.

Those folks probably would have been perfectly happy to submit to the furry shackles of the soft fascism of Soda-Banning Frodo. Bloomberg would keep their status and wealth intact and if the price is their freedom, well, okay. Some people are just pathetic submissives. And they might have the chance to sell out their liberty for a little fake security because the Democrat establishment totally gets that Sanders is not only a loser at the top of the ticket but his gooey commie ichor will trickle down defeat all the way to the bottom of the ballot. So, mark my words – they are going to try to steal the nomination that Sanders is winning fair and square and toss it to the tiny tycoon who will open his massive wallet and make it rain to make that happen.

And while many Sanders-inclined suckers will obediently obey the command to vote for the malignant dwarf in November, a bunch of Bernie Bros, Bernie Bro-ettes, and Bernie Gender Indeterminates will refuse to play. Neither can’t-idate can fully consolidate the Dems while Trump has the entire Republican Party behind him, save a few cruise-shilling hacks who lurk in the MSNBCNN green rooms impersonating conservatives.

This is no done deal, but all the talk about how “Bernie is really a dangerous opponent because reasons” is a bit much. Trump is going all-in already on his campaign, and that’s good, but simmer down. These Democrats have huge flaws that could lead to a McGovern-like wipeout…”

Original

Allahpundit:

“…Not a surprise given the news yesterday that one person there has died of the disease and two more, a teenager and a woman in her 50s, are presumptive positives. A fourth man from Washington was diagnosed with COVID-19 in January after traveling in China near Wuhan; he’s now completely recovered, but God only knows how many people he may have infected at the Seattle airport or elsewhere in the community before he was diagnosed. Flu researchers in Seattle sequenced the genome of the strain of coronavirus in the man who died and compared it to the strain in the man who was diagnosed in January. Were they distinct? Or were they related, which would be circumstantial evidence that the strain had spread through the community via patient one en route to patient two?

They’re related, per a local scientist.

…there are “a few hundred current infections” locally. Another researcher who models disease told the Times that he’d expect anywhere from 150 to 1,500 people to “have either been infected and recovered or currently are infected now.” One thing I’m keen to know but haven’t seen in any of the reporting about this today is whether there’s been an uptick in hospitalizations lately in Seattle and/or Snohomish County for respiratory illness. Are people coming in with COVID-19 and being mistakenly diagnosed with the flu or pneumonia?

And if there *isn’t* an uptick (yet), what conclusion should we draw from that? Note what the researcher said, that some Washingtonians may have been infected and recovered already, all on their own without medical assistance. An ER doctor in Massachusetts made the case in Slate yesterday that undetected community spread of coronavirus contains a major silver lining: It suggests that many cases of the disease just aren’t serious enough to warrant a doctor’s care, which means the death rate may be a lot lower than we think…

…If, hypothetically, 500 people in Washington have contracted the disease and only a handful have been sick enough to need care and only one has been sick enough to die from it, then we may be looking at a death rate of something like 0.2%, in line with the good ol’ flu. That’s the “good news.” The bad news is that lots of asymptomatic carriers obviously means the virus can spread quickly, and anything that spreads far enough will earn a large body count even with a low death rate. There may be many thousands of children in China who’ve contracted the disease and whose healthy young immune systems have successfully nuked it, but not before passing it along to mom and dad. Or, worse, to grandma and grandpa, for whom the death rate is much higher.

Which brings us to the other ominous coronavirus news out of Washington state yesterday:

Washington state reported on Saturday the first death in the U.S. from the new coronavirus, the first health care worker to be infected with the disease, and most worrying, the first known outbreak in a long-term care facility.

At a nursing facility in Kirkland, Wash, approximately 27 of the 108 residents and 25 of the 180 staff have some symptoms, health officials said during a teleconference with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Authorities report that some among them have pneumonia.

An outbreak at a facility for senior citizens or the chronically ill would be the worst-case scenario for small-scale spread. Stay tuned on that. In the meantime, a professor of health policy offered a helpful reminder on Twitter this morning that we should expect to see a huge “jump” in U.S. coronavirus diagnoses soon. That’s not because the disease suddenly began spreading rapidly overnight. Rather, it’s because we’re about to start ramping up more effective testing for it in patients and will no doubt detect many cases that have already been there for days or weeks.

Original

“…Both online news and search interest show the same upward trajectory beginning Jan. 21, but news coverage increases faster and does not peak until Feb. 2, two full days after the searches peak. News mentions of masks surge again on Feb. 21, but it is not until two days later that searches experience a similar surge. In turn, television news mentions of mask sales do not increase dramatically until Feb. 26, the day after web searches began surging rapidly.

Putting this all together, the graphs above suggest that the media’s wall-to-wall coverage of the coronavirus outbreak played a measurable role in driving public attention to the virus and likely worsening behaviors such as panic buying. The television media appear to have been late to the game, picking up on both the virus’ spread and the shortages of masks long after they were stories.

Most importantly, the strong association of coronavirus coverage with Donald Trump in the U.S. and the economy globally suggests the outbreak is being contextualized as a political and economic story — delivering a dose of panic in the process — rather than a public health emergency that requires clinical and dispassionate reporting…”

Original

Miranda Devine:

“…It’s a unique set of characteristics showing that President Trump understood early the need for decisive measures such as travel restrictions on China, which he imposed in January.

Yet, for that sensible decision — in defiance of the World Health Organization — he was criticized by Democrats such as Joe Biden as xenophobic, and by China as racist.

“This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia — hysterical xenophobia — and fearmongering,” said Biden the day after the travel restrictions were imposed.

CNN ran a story warning that “the US coronavirus travel ban could backfire” and have the effect of “stigmatizing countries and ethnicities.”

The Chinese Communist Party’s official mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, called the ban “racist.”

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned it would increase “fear and stigma, with little public health benefit.”…

…At the press conference with Trump on Saturday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the highly respected head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, praised the “original decision that was made by the president” . . . [that] prevented travel from China to the United States.

“If we had not done that, we would have had many, many more cases right here that we would have to be dealing with.”

Trump’s travel restrictions began on Jan. 31. Australia and Singapore instituted their own travel limits the next day. Trump’s move bought valuable time to slow the spread of the virus and ease pressure on the nation’s health system before a vaccine is developed — which experts believe is at least 18 months away.

But that hasn’t stopped the barrage of fake criticisms, including that Trump had left the nation dangerously unprepared to cope with a pandemic by cutting funding to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Not true. The CDC’s programming budget increased from $7.2 billion in 2019 to nearly $7.7 billion this year, the Associated Press fact-checking unit reported. Trump had proposed a cut, but Congress rejected it.

It’s reprehensible for the Democrats to make political hay by blaming Trump for the coronavirus or, as a New York Times op-ed piece called it, “Trumpvirus.”…”

Original

Was Tom Steyer’s Campaign the Worst in Presidential History?

AFTER 50 YEARS IN POLITICS, BIDEN JUST WON HIS FIRST RACE OUTSIDE OF DELAWARE

It's clear there are a handful of activist district judges trying to stop @realDonaldTrump's policies. Just look at the number of universal injunctions issued:
12 issued in 8 yrs of Bush Admin
19 issued in 8 yrs of Obama Admin
55 issued in just 3 yrs of Trump Admin pic.twitter.com/uboYjB8Wxh

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) February 25, 2020

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