Mulvaney says media using virus to ‘bring down president’

OXON HILL, MD. >> Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, on Friday blamed the media for exaggerating the seriousness of coronavirus because “they think this will bring down the president; that’s what this is all about.”

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of conservative activists, Mulvaney played down concerns about the virus that is spreading around the globe and panicking investors. Mulvaney said the administration took “extraordinary steps four or five weeks ago,” to prevent the spread of the virus when it declared a rare public health emergency and barred entry by most foreign citizens who had recently visited China.

“Why didn’t you hear about it?” Mulvaney said of travel restrictions that were widely covered in the news media. “What was still going on four or five weeks ago? Impeachment, that’s all the press wanted to talk about.”

The news media has been covering the global spread of coronavirus for months.

But Mulvaney claimed that the news media was too preoccupied covering impeachment, he said, “because they thought it would bring down the president.”

The media’s focus switched to the coronavirus for the same reason, he continued.

“The reason you’re seeing so much attention to it today is that they think this is going to be the thing that brings down the president,” he added. “That’s what this is all about.”

Following the president’s lead, Mulvaney also brushed off concerns over the virus. There have been 60 cases identified in the United States.

“The flu kills people,” he said. “This is not Ebola. It’s not SARS; it’s not MERS. It’s not a death sentence; it’s not the same as the Ebola crisis.”