merelygifted:

While Trump Whines Media is All ‘COVID, COVID, COVID,’ Fox News Gets Hit Hard

… Suffice to say that the claims of progress made handling the Trump virus are flagrant and dangerous lies. So is his delusional electoral analysis. He is losing to Joe Biden in every national poll, as well as in most of the crucial battleground states. But his obsessive whining about the media covering the pandemic is a self-serving and futile ploy to suppress news that he doesn’t like. And if he thinks his yelping will achieve that goal, he probably suffered more neurological damage from his own bout with COVID-19 than his doctors have let on.

The charge that the press is devoting substantial time to a deadly, out of control pandemic in order to hurt Trump’s campaign could only be thought up by a severely paranoid narcissist. But what makes this all the more ironic is that Trump’s own media Ministry of Propaganda (aka Fox News) is among the pandemic’s victims. A “Dear Colleagues” memo went out on Monday morning to Fox News employees from its CEO, Suzanne Scott, and President, Jay Wallace. It said in part that…

“We wanted to inform you about recent developments of a few positive COVID-19 cases at FOX News Media. This is a reminder that any employee who has tested positive will be quarantining and following all of our mandatory guidelines before they enter any of our buildings. Please know that we stay in close contact with those employees who have been affected and offer our complete support.”

The memo didn’t mention that the “few employees” impacted by this included the president, Jay Wallace, as well as anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, and two of the hosts of The Five, Dana Perino and Juan Williams. They were reportedly exposed to someone on a private flight, chartered by Fox News to bring staffers back from the presidential debate in Nashville, who later tested positive for the coronavirus. The memo also didn’t mention that many of Fox’s programs are disseminating the same lies about the virus that Trump is.

The memo went on to reaffirm that the network has been “operating under the strictest health and safety protocols throughout the pandemic.” And yet that didn’t protect them from this exposure. Additionally, the memo said that “we will be further reducing some of the workforce in our buildings and operating virtually wherever possible throughout the week.” It is important to note that “the week” referenced here isn’t just any week. It’s the week prior to the most important and hotly contested presidential election in modern times. And Fox’s president, along with the two anchors assigned to cover the returns, are going into quarantine.

So while Trump is babbling that “COVID, COVID, COVID” is a “fake news” media conspiracy against him, his pals at Fox News are hunkering down in their basements due to the surging spread of a virus that Trump says is “totally under control.” And never mind that his Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, said that they aren’t even trying to control it. …