On January 31st, President Trump announced a travel ban from China. And was promptly denounced as a racist and xenophobe by both Democrats and the media. There, for example, was former Vice President Joe Biden tweeting this:
“We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency.”
On February 24th House Speaker Nancy Pelosi conducted a quite public made-for-the-TV cameras visit to San Francisco’s Chinatown, urging the public to come visit. Said she: “Come to Chinatown, we are careful safe, and come join us.”
In April, at one of his daily virus briefings, the President said: “Nancy Pelosi was trying to have in San Francisco parties in Chinatown because she thought it would be great.”
And in a blink, The San Francisco Chronicle leapt to Pelosi’s defense. The Chronicle headline on an article by the paper’s John Wildermuth was this: “Trump inaccurately says Pelosi called for parties in SF’s Chinatown as coronavirus loomed.”
By itself this is a petty quibble over language. You can try and re-define what Pelosi said, as the SFC’s Wildermuth is trying to do, but plain as day there was Pelosi - weeks after the China travel ban was announced for the obvious reason that there was concern over human-to-human transmission of the virus - saying, literally, “Come to Chinatown, we are careful safe, and come join us.”
“Join us”? Join us for what, exactly? What’s to do in Chinatown once there? In fact, only a couple weeks earlier there was a quite specific party in Chinatown. As reported here on February 8th by the San Francisco- area’s Mercury News this way: “San Francisco’s huge Lunar New Year celebration goes on despite Coronavirus fears.”
The story reports one of the organizers of the party - er, parade - as saying this in Biden-like fashion:
“There’s a lot of xenophobia, racism going around lately that anything to do with Asia, you might get infected. That’s absolutely not true, and we definitely want to squash that kind of mentality.”
And oh yes. Here is - lo and behold! - The San Francisco Chronicle itself! - with its own photo spread of what certainly looks like one giant party in the heart of Pelosi’s San Francisco that took place a full week after Trump was assailed for his China travel ban.
And where had that kind of thinking on not-going-to-Chinatown-is-racist been heard before? That would be, of course, in the chorus of Biden/Democrat and media charges that the Trump China travel ban was racist. So as a defiant show of unity against racism and xenophobia, it was on with that annual big party - yes party - in Chinatown.
By the time Pelosi arrived for her “Come to Chinatown” visit, in fact the cameras caught a party staple - balloons - floating over the House Speaker as she stood among a crush of reporters and community leaders in one local store.
So in fact? In fact, contrary to the Chronicle, President Trump was dead on accurate about what Pelosi was about on February 24th. In violation of every ounce of common sense about the human-to-human spread of the virus - the obvious reason for the China travel ban in the first place - there was Nancy Pelosi urging people to “come to Chinatown.” A Chinatown that in fact had mere days earlier made a very big deal of hosting a mammoth Chinese New Year’s party - billed as “the largest and oldest celebration of the holiday outside of Asia” - replete, as the Chronicle itself illustrated, with all the party trimmings of dragon floats, balloons, dancers in exotic costumes and shoulder-to-shoulder crowds.
All of which is to say this jewel of Pelosi protection from her hometown paper is a small piece of the larger Leftist State Media method of operation. On a larger scale it explains why Brett Kavanaugh gets gallons of real and cyber ink plus hours of television coverage on an unconfirmed sexual assault allegation from high school, but a confirmed-by-contemporary account of a sexual assault charge against then-Senator Joe Biden by a former female aide gets mysteriously mostly ignored.
The simple fact in this case is that President Trump called it exactly right. Weeks after he had ordered the China travel ban, there was the city of San Francisco going full steam ahead with its Chinese New Year party, and days after that there was Speaker Pelosi herself pointedly walking the streets of San Francisco and urging tourists to come “come to Chinatown.”
And in spite of its best effort at deflection, the Chronicle’s deflection quibble over Trump’s language to re-write Pelosi’s actions have failed.
But that the paper would try to shield Pelosi? Shocking.
