CNN's Jim Acosta blasted for 'mansplaining' after interrupting Dr. Birx to attack Trump

CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta was widely blasted for interrupting Dr. Deborah Birx during Friday's coronavirus briefing to attack President Trump.
Birx took a moment at the podium to address the "who knew what when" concerns and said all the countries affected by the pandemic can "look back" to develop a timeline but not while "in the middle" of the crisis.
"We can talk about why didn't Italy do something or Spain do something or Germany do something, or we can really say right now -- we all can do something," Dr. Birx explained. "We can do the social distancing and all of the pieces that we know is starting to work around the globe in country after country. And then when we get through all of this, we can ask the questions about could we have done some piece of this better as a global community."
She then pivoted to the apparent errors the World Health Organization (WHO) made leading up to the outbreak in the U.S. as something that should be examined.
"I will remind you that on February 3rd, the head of the WHO said there was no reason to ever do a travel ban," Dr. Birx continued. "It wasn't until January 14th that we knew that there was human-to-human transmission,"

Acosta quickly derailed her observations about WHO to knock President Trump.
"Dr. Birx, the president was saying this was going to go away," Acosta said. "It's April."
"It is going to go away," President Trump fired back. "I said it was going away and it is going away."
Many took to social media to blast the reporter.
"Jim Acosta's interruption of Dr. Birx is an example of how CNN's echo-journalism model is destroying the media's credibility," George Washington University Law professor Jonathan Turley reacted. "Every question from Acosta is an effort to score points rather than elicit information. It is a press pandemic that continues to rage without relief."
Some accused Acosta of attempting to "mansplain" to the female medical expert.
"'Dear Diary: While I’m no expert, I tried #Mansplaining to an expert medical expert named Dr. Birx. @Acosta,'" former CNN commentator Paris Dennard quipped.
"@Acosta just tried to mansplain to Dr. Birx," GOP national spokeswoman Elizabeth Harrington tweeted.
Others pointed out how Acosta interrupted Dr. Birx as she was being critical of WHO, who critics have accused of shielding China amid the outbreak.
"Of course Acosta interrupted Birx as she was making an interesting comment about WHO," Daily Caller reporter Chuck Ross said.
TRUMP SPARS WITH JIM ACOSTA AT CORONAVIRUS BRIEFING: 'THIS IS WHY PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO LISTEN TO CNN ANYMORE'
CNN did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment.
Acosta has made a name for himself in the Trump era for his hostile exchanges with the president.
However, he is even criticized among his White House press corps colleagues. In his new book, ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl knocked his CNN counterpart, accusing him of "playing into the explicit Trump strategy of portraying the press as the opposition party."
"The surest way to undermine the credibility of the White House press corps is to behave like the political opposition," Karl wrote. "Don't give speeches from the White House briefing room."

Stock Market Cartoons 2020

Global stocks down with US jobs, oil rally in focus

BEIJING (AP) — Global stocks declined Friday after soaring U.S. job losses tempered enthusiasm about a possible deal to stabilize oil prices amid anxiety over the global economic decline due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Markets in London and Frankfurt traded lower while Shanghai, Hong Kong and Sydney closed down. Tokyo ended little-changed after spending part of the day in negative territory.

Some markets followed Wall Street higher after President Donald Trump said on Twitter he expected major oil producers Saudi Arabia and Russia to back away from their price-cutting war. But by midday, most Asian markets had retreated again.

ADVERTISEMENT

U.S. data showing 6.6 million Americans applied for unemployment this week were a “hard dose of economic reality,” said Jeffrey Halley of Oanda in a report.

That was double the previous week’s record-breaking U.S. job losses of 3.3 million. It raised the total number of Americans who are out of work due to the coronavirus-driven downturn to almost 10 million.

On Friday, the government’s monthly jobs report is due and is expected to show that the American jobs machine came to a sudden halt in March as a result of the coronavirus. Economists have forecast employers shed about 150,000 jobs and that the unemployment rate rose from a half-century low of 3.5% to 3.9%, according to FactSet.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 in London sank 1.1% to 5,420 and Frankfurt’s DAX shed 0.3% to 9,5537. The CAC 40 in Paris lost 0.9% to 4,182.

On Wall Street, futures for the benchmark S&P 500 index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were both off 0.9%.

On Thursday, the S&P 500 gained 2.3% after Trump said he expects production cuts are coming after talking with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 2.2% and the Nasdaq rose 1.7%.

In Asia, the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.6% to 2,763.99 and Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 gained 1.5 points to 17,820.19. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong lost 0.2% to 23,236.11 after falling as much as 0.8% earlier.

The Kospi in Seoul ended unchanged at 1,725.44 after being down 0.6%. Sydney’s S&P-ASX 200 declined 1.7% to 5,067.50 and India’s Sensex lost 1.9% to 27,727.19.

Benchmark U.S. crude added $1.30 to $26.62 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, used to price international oils, gained $2.32 to $32.26 per barrel in London.

Markets usually welcome lower energy costs for companies and consumers. But the abrupt plunge to below $20 this week from $60 at the start of the year triggered fears heavily indebted producers might default, undermining credit markets.

On Thursday, U.S. crude surged $5.01, or almost 25%, to $25.32 per barrel following Trump’s comments. The Kremlin denied President Vladimir Putin had talked with the prince but Saudi Arabia called for a meeting of major producers including Russia.

ADVERTISEMENT

Traders expect more volatility in financial markets until numbers of new coronavirus cases begin to decline, which forecasters say might be weeks away.

The number of confirmed cases worldwide has topped 1 million, led by the United States with more than 236,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

More than 51,000 have died, but more than 208,000 have recovered.

For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.

The dollar edged up to 108.54 yen from Thursday’s 107.90 yen. The euro declined to $1.0793 from $1.0856.

Dan Crenshaw slams Biden, ex-Obama aide for criticizing US coronavirus response

The global coronavirus outbreak is no time for political sniping.
That’s the message outspoken U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw delivered this week to two key members of the Obama administration: former Vice President Joe Biden and former Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.
Biden, the Democratic Party’s leading contender for the presidency, on Wednesday had harsh words for the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 crisis.
“It is a national disgrace that our health care workers still don’t have the protective equipment they need,” Biden wrote in a Twitter message.
The Biden tweet coincided with a disclosure from the U.S. Justice Department and Department of Health and Human Services that they were distributing nearly 200,000 N95 respirator masks and other medical supplies to hard-hit New York and New Jersey, after the supplies were seized from hoarders.
Reacting to Biden’s tweet, Crenshaw asserted that national stockpiles could have been better managed when Biden was vice president.
“Remember when you were VP and lived through H1N1 and Ebola?” Crenshaw wrote Thursday. “You could have added more PPE [personal protective equipment] to national stockpiles right? But you didn’t?”
But then Crenshaw made the point that political posturing wasn’t helping the nation address the crisis.
“See how easy it is to finger point? And play the bad-faith blame game?” Crenshaw continued. “Everyone is trying to solve this. These type of comments add nothing.”
Previously, Crenshaw called out Jarrett, after she claimed the U.S. would have been in safer hands had Obama been in charge of the virus response instead of President Trump.
“Someone asked me today how would @BarackObama have handled this crisis?” Jarrett wrote Wednesday. “Answer in one word – Better. OK, two words. Much better.”
Crenshaw, 36, who was elected to Congress in November 2018 after earning a Purple Heart and other honors for his service in Afghanistan as a Navy SEAL, wrote that the timing of Jarrett’s message seemed inappropriate to him.
“Why do so many Obama administration staffers constantly try to make Americans feel awful?” Crenshaw wrote. “Highlighting policy differences is expected – but this level of vitriol? During this pandemic? Why?”

Georgia governor says he only just learned coronavirus carriers can be asymptomatic

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said Wednesday that he had just learned this week that the coronavirus can be contagious before people are showing symptoms, citing that fact as part of the reason why he ordered a more strict shelter-in-place order for his state after previously balking on doing so -- yet the White House had said so as early as Jan. 31.
"I think as the reason I'm taking these actions it's like I've continued to tell people I'm following the data, I'm following the advice of Dr. Toomey," Kemp told reporters Wednesday, referencing Dr. Kathleen Toomey, the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health. "Her and I both mentioned in our remarks, you know, finding out that this virus is now transmitting before people see signs so what we've been telling people from directives from the CDC for weeks now that if you start feeling bad, stay home -- those individuals could have been infecting people before they even felt bad."
Kemp, a Republican, continued: "But we didn't know that until the last 24 hours and as Dr. Toomey told me, she goes, 'this is a game-changer for us.'"
But Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of the most recognizable faces of the White House coronavirus response, had disclosed that "game-changer" detail in January.
"You know that, in the beginning, we were not sure if there were asymptomatic infection, which would make it a much broader outbreak than what we’re seeing," Fauci said. "Now we know for sure that there are."
Kemp closed all public K-12 schools this week.
The Georgia Department of Public Health released a statement on Thursday that seemed to address and attempt to justify Kemp's Wednesday comments, which have been widely panned online, with one outlet suggesting he's either "lying or incompetent."
"For weeks it has been known that people who were positive for COVID-19 but did not have symptoms likely were able to transmit the virus," the release said. "However, on March 30, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield, M.D., confirmed that new data indicates that as many as 25% of individuals infected with COVID-19 remain asymptomatic. Additionally, science also now informs us that individuals who are symptomatic, are infectious up to 48 hours before symptoms appear."
On Wednesday, just three hours before Kemp's press conference, the CDC shared information that seemed to further confirm what Fauci had said in January -- that the coronavirus can be contagious in people who do not have symptoms.
"New @CDCMMWR report on #COVID19 in Singapore shows that some clusters of cases likely resulted from people without symptoms spreading illness," the agency tweeted. "Social distancing and avoiding crowds are key to slowing the spread of COVID-19."

After mocking Trump for promoting hydroxychloroquine, journalists acknowledge it might treat coronavirus

After repeatedly mocking President Trump for suggesting on March 19 that hydroxychloroquine could be an effective treatment for coronavirus, media organizations have begun acknowledging that the drug -- now approved for emergency use to treat coronavirus by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) -- may be useful after all.
Journalists and top Democrats have beaten a similarly hasty retreat from their previous claims that Trump's ban on travel from China was both xenophobic and ineffective. But media outlets' misinformation on hydroxychloroquine was unique because it involved not simply policy disagreements but also suggestive medical advice and directives that could have dissuaded some from seeking certain treatments.
"Malaria Drug Helps Virus Patients Improve, in Small Study," The New York Times reported this week, adding: "A group of moderately ill people were given hydroxychloroquine, which appeared to ease their symptoms quickly, but more research is needed."
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, went from threatening doctors who prescribed the drug with "administrative action" to requesting that the federal government ship her state some. Other state leaders have followed suit, including Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, also a Democrat.
It wasn't always considered acceptable to use that kind of optimistic rhetoric, however.
"Trump peddles unsubstantiated hope in dark times," read a March 20 "analysis" by CNN's Stephen Collinson. Saying Trump was "adopting the audacity of false hope" and embracing "premature optimism," Collinson charged that "there's no doubt he overhyped the immediate prospects for the drug" because the FDA refused to give a timeline on approving the drug to treat coronavirus.
"Trump is giving people false hope of coronavirus cures. It’s all snake oil," read one Washington Post headline. Added the Post's editorial board: "Trump is spreading false hope for a virus cure -- and that’s not the only damage."
"The most promising answer to the pandemic will be a vaccine, and researchers are racing to develop one," the paper insisted, although it is not staffed with medical experts. "Mr. Trump’s inappropriate hype has already led to hoarding of hydroxychloroquine and diverted supplies from people with other maladies who need it. His comments are raising false hopes. Rather than roll the dice on an unproven therapy, let’s deposit our trust in the scientists."
USA Today's editorial board was similarly aggressive and mocking, writing, "Coronavirus treatment: Dr. Donald Trump peddles snake oil and false hope."
"There are no approved therapies or drugs to treat COVID-19 yet, but the president hypes preliminary chloroquine trials at White House briefing and unproven remedies on Twitter," the paper wrote, just days before the FDA would approve the drug.
Communications strategist Drew Holden flagged these and numerous other examples of media misinformation on the matter in a lengthy Twitter thread.
Salon, Holden noted, called Trump's hope in the new treatment his "most dangerous flim-flam: False hope and quack advice."

President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, Wednesday, April 1, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The New Yorker pondered "The Meaning of Donald Trump’s Coronavirus Quackery," observing that Trump's "pronouncements are a reminder, if one was needed, of his scorn for rigorous science, even amid the worst pandemic to hit the U.S. in a century."
Michael Cohen, a Boston Globe columnist, urged networks to stop airing Trump's coronavirus press briefings because he was spreading "misinformation" about a potential cure.
And, NBC News complained, "Trump, promoting unproven drug treatments, insults NBC reporter at coronavirus briefing."
The New York Times' Kurt Eichenwald reported that a "Louisiana MD" on the "front lines of the COVID-19 fight" had told him that "Hydroxychloroquine doesn't work" and that "amateurs who dont [sic] understand research" were driving up demand for the drug. ("Count me skeptical of your source here, Kurt," Holden wrote.)
Vox mocked Trump's "new favorite treatment" for the drug, and said the evidence is "lacking" that it works.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that the Arizona woman who said she and her husband drank fish-tank cleaner to ward off coronavirus has donated heavily to Democrats and acknowledges she's not a Trump supporter -- despite news reports that she ingested the dangerous drug because she trusted what she thought was the president's advice.
The 61-year-old woman, whose first name is Wanda but has asked for her full identity to be withheld, survived the ordeal. Her 68-year-old husband, Gary, did not. Wanda has said that she and her husband each took a "teaspoon" of the fish-tank cleaner; medical toxicology results and a police investigation were pending.
"I saw it sitting on the back shelf and thought, 'Hey, isn't that the stuff they're talking about on TV?'" Wanda told NBC News, referring to the chloroquine phosphate in her fish-tank cleaner.
DEMS CALL CHINA TRAVEL BAN XENOPHOBIC, NOW CHANGE THEIR TUNE
On March 19, Trump had touted anecdotal evidence that the antimalarial drug chloroquine could be used as a treatment for coronavirus during a White House briefing, calling it a possible "game-changer." In fact, the Food and Drug Administration has approved the drug on an emergency basis, even though various media reports had mocked Trump's suggestion.
However, the woman and her husband ingested the additive chloroquine phosphate, which has been used in aquariums to kill microscopic organisms that might harm fish and other aquatic animals.
Several media organizations that confused the chloroquine medication with chloroquine phosphate later issued corrections. The New York Times, though, all but accused Trump of recommending the same substance in the fish-tank cleaner.
Nevertheless, Wanda drew national attention by claiming that Trump had suggested she consume the fish-tank cleaner with her husband, and that she did so to avoid "getting sick."
"My advice is don’t believe anything that the president says and his people because they don’t know what they’re talking about," Wanda told NBC News' Vaughn Hillyard.
WHAT IS CHLOROQUINE?
Federal Election Commission (FEC) records reviewed by The Washington Free Beacon revealed numerous other recipients of Wanda's cash, including Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the pro-choice EMILY's List.
Additionally, Fox News has reviewed a Facebook page apparently belonging to Wanda, which was first identified by the Twitter user Techno Fog.
"Your psycho prez is in [t]own, are you going to see him?" Wanda wrote on Facebook on Feb. 19, by way of wishing a friend a happy birthday. Trump was in town at a rally in Phoenix, Ariz., on that day.
Wanda has not replied to multiple requests for comment by Fox News. She deleted her Facebook page after Fox News attempted to contact her there.

Virus Mask Cartoon

Virus masks, apps: The race is on to avoid hidden carriers

NEW YORK (AP) — The worldwide race to protect people against unwitting coronavirus carriers intensified Thursday, pitting governments against each other in the race to buy protective gear and prompting new questions about who should wear masks, get temperature checks or even be permitted to go outside.

In the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the pandemic began in December, a green symbol on their smartphones dictates the movements of residents. Green is the “health code” that says a user is symptom-free and it’s required to board a subway, check into a hotel or enter the central city of 11 million. Serious travel restrictions still exist for those who have yellow or red symbols.

ADVERTISEMENT

In northern Italy, the country with the most virus deaths in the world at over 13,000, guards armed with thermometer guns decide who can enter supermarkets. In Los Angeles, the mayor has recommended that the city’s 4 million people wear masks.

And a top health official in France’s hard-hit eastern region said Americans swooped in at a Chinese airport to spirit away a planeload of masks that France had already ordered by.

“On the tarmac, the Americans arrive, take out cash and pay three or four times more for our orders, so we really have to fight,” Jean Rottner, an emergency room doctor in Mulhouse told RTL radio.

A study by researchers in Singapore on Wednesday estimated that around 10% of new infections may be sparked by people who carry the virus but have not yet suffered its flu-like symptoms.

In response, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed how it defined the risks of infection, saying essentially that anyone may be a carrier, whether they have symptoms or not. It is yet to change its guidance against having everyone wearing masks.

But from New York to Los Angeles, U.S. officials warned that the worst is ahead.

“How does it end? And people want answers,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. “I want answers. The answer is nobody knows for sure.”

New York state’s coronavirus death toll doubled in 72 hours to more than 1,900. Cuomo has already complained that U.S. states are competing against each other for protective gear and breathing machines, or being outbid by the federal government.

President Donald Trump acknowledged that the federal stockpile is nearly depleted of personal protective equipment used by doctors and nurses.

ADVERTISEMENT

“We’re going to have a couple of weeks, starting pretty much now, but especially a few days from now, that are going to be horrific,” he said.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said even a “tucked-in bandanna” could slow the spread of the virus and remind people to keep their distance.

“I know it will look surreal,” he said, donning a mask. “We’re going to have to get used to seeing each other like this.”

In Greece, authorities placed an entire refugee camp under quarantine Thursday after discovering that a third of the 63 contacts of an infected woman tested positive for the virus — and none showed symptoms.

Altogether, close to 940,000 people around the world have contracted the virus, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. More than 47,000 have died from the virus and another 195,000 have recovered.

The real figures are believed to be much higher because of testing shortages, differences in counting the dead and large numbers of mild cases that have gone unreported. Critics say some governments have been deliberately under-reporting cases in order to avoid public criticism.

As hot spots flared in New Orleans and Southern California, the nation’s biggest city, New York, was the hardest hit of them all, with bodies loaded onto refrigerated morgue trucks by forklifts outside overwhelmed hospitals.

”It’s like a battlefield behind your home,” said 33-year-old Emma Sorza, who could hear the sirens from the swamped Elmhurst Hospital in Queens.

Cuomo said projections suggest the crisis in New York will peak at the end of April, with a high death rate continuing through July.

For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for others, especially older adults and people with health problems, it can cause severe symptoms like pneumonia and lead to death.

Asian stocks meandered Thursday after a White House warning that as many as 240,000 Americans might die in the pandemic sent Wall Street tumbling. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 970 points, or over 4%.

Many countries are now modeling their response to the virus in part after China, which in January closed off an entire province of over 70 million people. The government says the measures have been a success and reports that nearly all new cases of the virus have been imported from abroad.

People in Wuhan, once the epicenter of the crisis, are starting to return to work, tracked by a smartphone app that shows if they are symptom free.

Walking into a subway station Wednesday, Wu Shenghong, a manager for a clothing manufacturer, used her phone to scan a barcode on a poster that triggered her app. A green code and part of her identity card number appeared on the screen. A guard wearing a mask and goggles waved her through.

If the code had been red, that would tell the guard that Wu was confirmed to be infected or had a fever or other symptoms and was awaiting a diagnosis. A yellow code would mean she had contact with an infected person but hadn’t finished a two-week quarantine, meaning she should be in a hospital or quarantined.

In Europe, the strains facing some of the world’s best health care systems has been aggravated by hospital budget cuts over the past decade in Italy, Spain, France and Britain. They have called in medical students, retired doctors and even laid-off flight attendants with first aid training to help their country’s overstressed medical workers.

The staffing shortage has been worsened by the high numbers of infected personnel, many of whom are working without protective gear. In Italy alone, nearly 10,000 medical workers have contracted the virus and more than 60 doctors have died.

___

Hinnant reported from Paris. Associated Press writers around the world contributed to this report.