Once upon a time, when I lived in Chicago and did not have cable teevee, I used to be up with the roosters to watch the Sunday Morning Mouse Circus and report on the various crimes against journalism that were being committed on live television.
And then I would write long, stirring, deeply analysed posts about what I had just witnessed which would be read by literally dozens of people.
But over the past few years I've kinda tapered off and this tweet pretty succinctly summarizes why:
For the record, Mr. Hewitt, who we established long ago is definitely a Cyborg Sent From The Future To Destroy America, lied on national teevee about the pandemic death rate in Germany by a factor of 100. Then Chuck Todd stopped the show in its tracks, denounced Hewitt as the bloodless Quisling that he is, threw him off the set and told him never to darken Meet the Press' door again!
Bwahahaha!
Just kidding. Nothing like that happened or ever will happen. Ol' Shuck just let it slide because letting Republicans lie on teevee is what ol' Shuck was hired to do. (Transcript via NBC)
HUGH HEWITT: Well, yesterday 500 Americans died, Chuck. And in Germany, 680 Germans died. The United States' death toll has dropped dramatically from May, when it was 2,700. And in between, it's been a month and three days since George Floyd was murdered. In between, we had millions of Americans express their anger at overzealous policing and at the unnecessary use of violence, often lethal, against African Americans. And that was an event in the story of this virus. There's another event in the story of the virus. There's a ventilator supply now of 50,000 that the president got done. There is a lot more social distancing and a lot of older Americans are intuitively staying away. And the sharp rise in cases is among younger Americans.
So what I think the president has to do, look, Joe Biden is very confident. He's measuring the drapes in the White House basement already. He thinks he's got this in the bag. The president needs to, as I said in the first segment, go back to his numbers and say, "Hey America. Who's going to get us back to where we were in January: Joe Biden in the basement or Donald Trump?" And I think he's got to do that in one-on-one interviews with as many people, including you and people who might be very tough on him in conversations, every day a one-on-one interview like he did in 2016.
The Internet, bless its hexadecimal heart, was having none of it, and immediately began dragging Mr. Hewitt so hard that he was forced to "correct" his lie on Twitter. However, Mr. Hewitt remains steadfast that his acclaim for President Cornered Rat's handling of the pandemic based on that lie is still 100% valid.
Although to be charitable, I'm not sure that "lie" is the right word.
After all --
-- the A2s always were a bit twitchy.
Republished with permission from Driftglass.