The Trump-Fox News feedback loop now going after Andrew Cuomo and Dr. Anthony Fauci

Editor’s Note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show” and a columnist for The Daily Beast. Trump’s chief cheerleader Sean Hannity, on his February 27 show, did note that the “rapid spread” of the coronavirus was “concerning.” But Hannity gave his political spin, slamming “some on the left” for “literally whipping this country into a frenzy,” as he claimed that Democrats were “sadly politicizing and weaponizing an infectious disease as their next effort to bludgeon President Trump.” Unsurprisingly, the very next night, Trump downplayed the threat of the coronavirus at a rally, instead going on the attack and, like Fox News, claiming the Democrats “are politicizing the coronavirus.” The President then ticked off what he views as the Democrats’ other attempts to take him down which he has deemed in the past “hoaxes,” from “Russia” to “impeachment” then adding, “and this is their new hoax.” We also saw Fox News hosts follow Trump’s lead in undermining the danger posed by the coronavirus as being no more dangerous than the seasonal flu. It comes as no surprise that soon Fox News hosts were making the same claim, such as Jeanine Pirro declaring on the March 7 edition of her show, “all the talk about coronavirus being so much deadlier doesn’t reflect reality.” Pirro argued that the flu would be much more deadly if not for the fact that we have a vaccine against it. In fact, during Saturday’s White House press briefing, Trump went after Cuomo claiming the he has not been “gracious,” given that the Trump administration has “given the governor of New York more than anybody has ever been given in a long time.” The fact New York has received so much assistance from the federal government is obviously because the state has by far the most cases of coronavirus in America – but to Trump doing the right thing demands that a governor be grateful to him. On his show Friday, Carlson attacked Fauci’s call to shut down America for long periods to stop the spread of the virus as being “national suicide.” Carlson went on to criticize Fauci by stating, “Fauci is not an economist – or for that matter, someone who fears being unemployed.” Carlson added that, “We should never let someone like that run the country.” Given Carlson’s monologue Friday, it’s no surprise that come Saturday’s press conference Trump echoed his impatience with keeping the country closed, saying “We don’t want to be doing this for months and months and months.” This just moments after he warned that America’s “toughest week” of the coronavirus crisis was upon us, predicting “there will be death.” It’s impossible to know where Trump stops and Fox News begins or vice versa.