Few topics create as much hypocrisy as executive use of power.
Quick🧵comparing how the press has covered Biden’s vaccine mandate announcement vs. Trump’s threat to override governors on houses of worship.
Spot the difference? ⤵️
Back in May 2020, President Trump said he would override governors who wouldn’t allow houses of worship to open. Yesterday, President Biden said he would do the same about governors who wouldn’t enforce a vaccine mandate.
Can you spot the difference in how @CNN covered it?
Honestly, this could’ve been a thread just dedicated to @CNN.
Can you spot a difference in tone when it comes to who supports each approach?
Definitely not rooting for a side here, right, @CNN?
This presented without comment.
But it wasn’t just CNN
Here’s @AP, a supposedly neutral wire service, in how they frame each president’s decision, both of which quickly drew legal challenges.
If these were written by a Dem comms team, what would be changed?
I continue to find it interesting where media outlets feel compelled to point out a potential lack of authority vs. when they don’t. @abcnews
Will we get a “Biden seizes” headline, @washingtonpost? Or are those only for Republicans?
Again, you’ve got headlines from corporate media outlets that read like Biden press releases. That’s bad.
I fear that, at the current rate, I’ll have to do a full thread on this one on Monday.
But to repeat myself for the 6201052nd time: overstepping government authority should not go from bad to good just because your team did it.
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She’s trending so brief🧵thread🧵chronically the times that @JoyAnnReid used her platform to push unfounded vaccine fears because she didn’t like the guy in the Oval Office.
Starting with this interview in August 2020 (there are plenty more⤵️)
But to stay on this one for a second: in August 2020, @JoyAnnReid had a doctor on to say that she wouldn’t advise her patients to take the vaccine *even if* the head of the FDA signed off on it before clinical trials were complete.
What happened to trust the science?
And this was far from the only time this happened.
A few weeks later, in early September, she doubled down, endorsing an article titled “Trump’s vaccine can’t be trusted.”
You may remember that the vaccine (which Reid now firmly endorses) rolled out under Trump.
We’ve got to talk about the Rolling Stone invermectin article. Turns out the story about rural hospitals so flooded with ODs that they couldn’t treat other patients was made up, entirely invented.
A lot of people took the bait, and I’ve got the screenshots.⤵️
First, for context, here’s the original piece from @RollingStone and the follow up from the actual hospital saying the story was BS and that the one (one!) person the story quotes doesn’t work at that hospital anymore (and hasn’t in months).
But it wasn’t just a single story out in the ether. Plenty of other places picked up the story, too, with no additional sourcing or research.
It's cynical, but I think Biden's speech was pretty well-calibrated for what Americans actually care about. Three-quarters of Americans want out of Afghanistan. Things have gotten tough this week but Biden is sticking with that.
If you're holding your breath for the American people to actually care about what this'll mean for women and girls in Afghanistan - or translators and others who served with US soldiers - I've got some bad news for you.
The human cost will be enormous and avoidable. The political consequences of that? Probably nil. I suspect Biden's speech will be a comfort for a lot of people.