Donald Trump and the team he assembled to fight the Wuhan virus in the United States gave a press conference Friday afternoon at the White House. As the president and his team spoke, the stock market soared, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing that day at an all-time record increase of 1,972.
The wide-ranging but highly focused press conference laid out concrete plans to drastically increase testing for coronavirus in the United States. It laid out public-private partnerships to make this happen, including Google creating a portal for those seeking testing.
On the financial side, Trump offered a suspension of interest for student debt, an aggressive approach to the oil crisis, and suggested the federal government was prepared to send taxpayer dollars to the cruise and airline industries, among others, to recoup losses from the pandemic.
The stock market roared. Thursday’s record losses were won back. This is enormously good news for millions of Americans with 401(k)s or stocks. It is absolutely something that every American should celebrate. By the way, the largest gain in the Dow Jones ever also happens to be pretty newsworthy.
Unless you are CNN. Coming back from the press conference, the Atlanta anti-Trumpers landed on Jake Tapper for reaction, and then to Dr. Sanjay Gupta. There was dire talk of mixed messages, and questions of why hasn’t this happened sooner?
You know what didn’t get mentioned? The record-breaking stock market recovery that happened during the press conference.
Now. mind you, these are the same people who have spent every hour since Trump gave his Oval Office address talking about how he spooked the market. How it was the most expensive speech of all time. Pointing and laughing at its failure. Fine, that’s fair game. But when the next day he goes four for four with 6 RBI, you don’t suddenly get to pretend the stock market doesn’t exist.
Let’s be blunt. CNN is no longer a news outlet. It is a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. Any good news that actually helps Americans is framed as a weird aberration, if it makes any air time at all. It didn’t after the president’s remarks when, if I can just say it again, THE STOCK MARKET HIT A RECORD HIGH. But that’s not news at CNN because it doesn’t hurt Trump.
What’s insulting is the transparency more than the hypocrisy. I mean, the hypocrisy is bad — “apples and bananas and we only report facts,” utter rubbish. But CNN could at least obfuscate its obvious biases a bit. We’re not stupid.
As far as the news media goes, I don’t love the president calling it the enemy of the people. But regarding CNN, as someone whose job it is to admit my biases and trade in all facts, not just the ones I like or that support my position, I can firmly and proudly say that CNN is the enemy of me.