CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter compared the federal government’s coronavirus response to the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
On his Sunday show, Reliable Sources, Stelter identified areas where President Trump altered his tone and public approach to the coronavirus. “He is still getting lots of facts wrong at these briefings. One day he said scarves work better than masks. One day he said airplane and train travelers are being given very strong tests for the virus before departure and after arrival. It’s not true. Maybe it should be true, but it’s not,” Stelter began.
The host shifted to identify “government’s delays and dysfunction,” claiming it was a central story as the COVID-19 virus has infected more than 1.2 million people globally and nearly 338,000 in the United States.
“There’s a whole lot of revisionist history being penned right now, a lot of digging of the memory hole. The pro-Trump media is trying to bury the Trump White House’s failures to fully protect and prepare the country from this pandemic. In the immortal words of White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, ‘There’s no reason to go backwards and figure out tick-tocks of what happened when. We’ve got a crisis on our hands.’ Right. And the crisis is why we need to look backwards and learn from mistakes and make sure they are never made again,” Stelter said.
“Look at this Associated Press headline from just today: ‘U.S. ‘wasted’ months before preparing for viral pandemic.’ This was a 9/11-level failure of the federal government. It was. It needs to be talked about and covered and scrutinized that way,” he added.
Three thousand Americans were killed in the terrorist attacks that took place on Sept. 11, 2001. Following the attacks, President George W. Bush issued public statements of encouragement: “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.” Major conflicts were later initiated in the Middle East, in areas such as Afghanistan and Iraq.
A report from an independent, bipartisan commission issued in 2004 found government agencies failed to act on intelligence before the attacks, saying they “were a shock but they should not have come as a surprise.”
Although the coronavirus pandemic has not yet been resolved, a prominent House Democrat, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, has called for a “9/11-style commission” to investigate the Trump administration’s response to the outbreak.
“After Pearl Harbor, September 11, and many momentous events in American history, independent, bipartisan commissions have been established to provide a complete accounting of what happened, what we did right and wrong, and what we can do to better protect the country in the future,” Schiff said in a statement.
Separately, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced last week she was forming a special House panel to oversee the distribution of billions of federal dollars dedicated to the response to the coronavirus outbreak.
