Are You Kidding Me? Media Trying to Pin 100,000 Trump Covid Deaths on Joe Biden

President Joe Biden has been in office for one month, and the media is already trying to weaponize Donald Trump’s coronavirus disaster against him by pinning 100,000 of the 500,000 (and counting) Covid fatalities on the new administration.

During Monday’s White House daily briefing, ABC News White House correspondent Cecilia Vega asked Press Secretary Jen Psaki a question that carried the suggestion that the Biden administration bears some negligent responsibility for Covid deaths since they took office.

Vega said that “you mentioned at the top of your remarks the grim milestone that the country is facing today with these 500,000 deaths,” added that “100,000 of those Americans have died within the last month,” and asked, “What reflections is this White House having on the last month, as we ask as a country, Could more have been done? As Dr. Fauci said today, ‘It didn’t have to be this bad.’ Could more have been done in the last month also?”

I’ll get to Psaki’s answer in a minute, but this question is factually dishonest and illegitimate on every level, notwithstanding its nauseating intent to “both-sides” the death toll.

Scientifically speaking, there is nothing that the Biden administration could have done to reduce those 100,000 deaths because those infections all occurred either during the last days of Trump’s presidency or maybe during the first week of Biden’s. The timeline from exposure to death of Covid-19 ranges from about three weeks to two months.

Psaki soft-pedaled her response, telling Vega that “we, one, inherited a circumstance where there was not a — there were not enough vaccines ordered, there were not enough vaccinators available to vaccinate Americans, and there were not enough places to — for people to go to get those vaccines shot into their arms.”

Psaki added that “you can always look back and say, ‘We wish we would’ve done this better. We wish the storm wouldn’t have come.’ But our focus is on building out of the hole that we inherited and ensuring that we are taking every step necessary, every step possible to reach people in their communities, to tap into the manufacturing sector through the DPA, to communicate effectively about eligibility. And that’s what our focus is in on — at this point in time: the path forward.”

What she could have said was, “Are you freaking kidding me? The last guy spent an entire year lying about the virus, telling people to take poison, actively campaigning against mask-wearing, literally superspreading the virus, telling Americans that the devastating death toll ‘is what it is,’ and left us without any plan for actually getting vaccinations into people’s bodies. We are doing the best we can, and we take full responsibility for fighting this disaster, but hell if we will ever own a single one of the deaths that Donald Trump and his accomplices caused.”

Tomato, tomahto.

This is a trap being set by the media to weaponize the Biden administration’s relative decency and maturity, and perhaps susceptibility to dimwitted narratives like “the blame game,” but it cannot be allowed to flourish.

There are, and will be, legitimate criticisms to be made. For example, if I were a teacher, I’d be wondering why the CDC guidelines are causing people to insist, in one breath, that it’s “safe” for me to go back to school without a vaccination, but also I should be vaccinated as soon as humanly possible.

There are legitimate discussions to be had over the pace and substance of Covid relief negotiations, although Biden appears to have found the sweet spot with the American people. While the media and Republicans raise doubts about the price tag, 80 percent of Americans say it’s the right size, or needs to be bigger. That includes 61 percent of Republicans.

But there will never be a time when it is appropriate to hand off the disastrous Trump death toll to someone else, or to equate his actively pro-virus actions with good-faith efforts to end the pandemic and heal the damage that was done by them.

The media played this game with then-President Barack Obama and the Bush financial disaster, and the Obama administration unwisely played into it. They succumbed to demands for empty bipartisanship that hobbled their efforts at recovery, then spent years apologizing for the consequences of Republican obstruction. If I had a nickel for every desk I smashed with my forehead when Obama said something like “We’re making progress but it’s not nearly enough,” I could have paid off everyone’s mortgage.

President Biden isn’t shy about reminding people of Trump’s Covid clownery, which is a good sign, but the days of carefully-worded and measured pushback are over. Reserve that for legitimate criticism. This garbage needs to be met with the derision it deserves.

Watch the clip above via The White House.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.