The Washington Post’s fact-checker gave a video tweeted by Joe Biden “four Pinocchios” for the claim that President Trump attempted to muzzle a CDC official who warned the public about the spread of the coronavirus.
“Anyone who raised an alarm about this, a red flag, was silenced,” a Biden campaign aide can be seen saying in a video posted on Biden’s Twitter account. “Look no further than Dr. Nancy Messonnier, a career official at the Centers for Disease Control, who was the first to raise the alarm.”
“Starting the next day, Dr. Messonnier no longer appeared at public briefings of the White House coronavirus task force. The president and the White House sent a clear message to scientists in the government: There would be a price for speaking out and speaking up,” the aide claimed.
Everyone knows that we’re facing a real crisis from the coronavirus. But do you know how we got here and what we need to do next? Ron Klain, former White House Ebola Response Coordinator, breaks it down for us: pic.twitter.com/XRkIw2EzM4
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) March 21, 2020
Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler acknowledged that Messonnier had made public comments about the coronavirus and that Trump, according to reports, wasn’t happy with how those comments played in the media, but he outlined several examples of how the CDC official was able to speak freely and was not silenced.
“Meanwhile, far from being silenced, Messonnier kept doing her telephone briefings with reporters — on Feb. 28, Feb. 29, March 3 and March 9,” Kessler wrote. “She also appeared in four videos shared on social media, such as this one from March 14.”
“Messonnier’s remarks on Feb. 25 may have caught the attention of Wall Street and caused angst in the White House,” the fact-checker continued. “But we cannot find evidence of her being immediately silenced, as Klain claims in the video.”
Biden will square off in a debate against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in April in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, which the former vice president has all but locked up.
