Tucker Carlson Takes Credit For Turning Trump Around To The Severity Of COVID-19

By John Amato — March 18, 2020

When the news of the coronavirus broke, Donald Trump immediately called it "the new Democrat hoax" and all the MAGA morons believed him.

As the virus spread around the world Trump kept minimizing the dangers posed and mocked the severity of the virus during his unhinged campaign rallies.

On March 11, the New York Times reported Tucker Carlson's words on his show on the coronavirus were aimed directly at the White House, his fellow Fox News hosts, and Trump himself.

Speaking on his Monday Fox News show, Tucker Carlson seemed to speak directly to skeptics like the president and Mr. Hannity, whose prime-time program follows his. “People you trust, people you probably voted for, have spent weeks minimizing what is clearly a very serious problem,” Mr. Carlson said, adding: “People you know will get sick, some may die. This is real."

Then in early March, there were several fundraisers at Mar-a-Lago, one was a birthday party for Kimberly Guilfoyle where several Republicans were exposed to the virus.

Tucker Carlson was present and was able to speak directly to Trump and advised him to take COVID-19 seriously.

As it happened, Mr. Carlson was concerned that the president was not taking the coronavirus seriously enough and talked with him about it during the evening, according to a person informed about the conversation. Two days later, on his Fox show, Mr. Carlson warned viewers: “People you trust, people you probably voted for, have spent weeks minimizing what is clearly a very serious problem.”

And it appears with his words along with a new study from Imperial College in London, which estimated the death rate from the pandemic if no control measures are taken could be over a million pushed Trump away from his nonsensical denials and into the real word.

Joe Hagan interviewed Tucker Carlson for Vanity Fair that dropped yesterday and discussed this at length.

The interview is filled with Carlson's usual attacks on the media, the Democratic Party, and the politicization of Trump's presidency from the lens of an uber-Trump supporter to try and minimize Donald's disastrous denials on the severity of the pandemic and then his handling of COVID-19.

He soft-pedaled Trump's inaction on protecting American lives and taking the virus seriously, but he did come somewhat come clean on his talk with Trump.

Hagen writes, "Tucker Carlson started talking more extensively about the virus on his Fox News show on February 3, spurred, he says, by harrowing reports emerging from China. Trump, it seems, was the last to know. A White House adviser arranged for Carlson to meet with Trump so the TV personality could, in essence, penetrate Trump’s bubble. They talked for two hours. The oncoming pandemic, Carlson told him, was an existential threat to the nation. To translate it into Trumpian language, an existential threat to his reelection.

The portrait you’re painting here is of Trump in a bubble. Don’t you think he was in denial?
I think Trump has a really finely calibrated sense of danger and I think it served him well. I think a lot of the people around him, and I mean broadly around him—particularly Republican members on Capitol Hill, in leadership too—were determined to pretend this wasn’t happening. There are a number of members of the Senate who really ought to know better, who, by the way, are at risk of being really hurt by this personally [Note: Senators Lindsey Graham and Rick Scott were both exposed to the virus at Mar-a-Lago]—who were determined to convince him that this was not that big a deal.

Since Trump refuses to take his daily briefing seriously and almost never believes the 'experts' in any field, it's no surprise how much he's failed this country in response to a pandemic.

I guess we have to be happy that someone was able to get through to him but to think it takes an on-air carnival barker to shake Trump out of his denial is truly terrifying.

Never forget that Trump denied this crisis for WEEKS in order to protect himself politically. His narcissism knows no bounds.

THREAD/ For weeks, Pres Trump has downplayed the risks Coronavirus posed to Americans. He either deflected or said it was under control.

If journalists are to hold elected officials accountable for their words and actions, we will need to have a memory span longer then a flash

— Ayman Mohyeldin (@AymanM) March 17, 2020