Some Democrats avoid Fox News altogether, while others will avoid inflammatory far-right carnival barkers like Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson but will speak to some of the more reasonable people at Fox such as Chris Wallace and Andrew Napolitano. But Richard Goodstein, a former Bill Clinton aide, went into the belly of the beast when, on Wednesday night, February 26, he appeared as a guest on Ingraham's show, "The Ingraham Angle," and vehemently criticized President Donald Trump's response to the coronavirus threat.
And Ingraham, not surprisingly, had a temper tantrum when Goodstein also called Trump out for the "Sharpiegate" fiasco of September 2019.
Ingraham has been claiming that Democrats are using coronavirus as an excuse to attack Trump, but Goodstein stressed that coronavirus is hardly something that members of his party are welcoming with open arms.
Goodstein told Ingraham, "I don't know a single Democrat — anybody, actually — who really is hoping their neighbor comes down with the coronavirus so they can gloat about the fact that the Trump Administration didn't do enough. The concern of Democrats is two things: (1) the public doesn't trust Donald Trump. That's undisputable if you look at every poll from the start to today of the Trump Administration. And that raises concerns when he's trying to kind of assure the public, saying, 'Oh, by April, this will be over' and things like that. It just doesn't ring true."
The former Clinton aide continued, "And secondly, when you attack science, use a Sharpie to change a hurricane map — when you say climate change is a hoax…."
That's when Ingraham became furious. The term "Sharpiegate" refers to the controversy that surrounded Trump's childish actions in response to Hurricane Dorian in September 2019, when Trump claimed that Alabama was in the hurricane's path and the National Weather Service corrected him. Rather than admit that he had made a mistake and acknowledge that Alabama wasn't in danger, Trump used a Sharpie to alter a map of Hurricane Dorian's path.
Ingraham could have admitted that Trump made himself look ridiculous during the "Sharpiegate" fiasco. Instead, she was angry that Goodstein even brought it up.
"Oh, my God, I can't believe it," Ingraham ranted. "OK, Richard. You're going to a Sharpie and the stupid hurricane map. We are talking about the coronavirus. You are turning this into a political diatribe; that's why you guys are going to lose in November."
Ingraham continued, "You know what people don't believe? People don't believe that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer gave a rat's you-know-what about coronavirus until this week, OK? When impeachment went down the tubes, and their poll numbers were flatlining and Bernie (Sanders) is going to get the nomination — then they are freaking out because nothing else worked."
Goodstein, however, doubled down on his point, stressing that Trump "is anti-science." And Ingraham responded that Democrats are "anti-science" because they believe that "a baby born alive isn't a baby — it's a fetus that happened to just appear."
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