Coronavirus Information...who do you trust?

[GMDino]

(10-27-2020, 12:23 PM)bfine32 Wrote: **Check on Point of View"**

Did Biden call Trump's early travel ban to China Xenophobic? 

(10-27-2020, 12:25 PM)PhilHos Wrote: No, he did not. The Democrats HAD politicized COVID. They called Trump's travel ban xenophobic (whether it was effective is a valid criticism, claiming he was racist for doing so, not so much); Pelosi and Shumer invited everyone to come down to Chinatown to show they weren't racist. They were certainly critical of Donald Trump (ie. calling travel ban xenophobic) at a time when only 6 people in America had died from COVID. 

So, no, everything he said was NOT a "huge lie". 

(10-27-2020, 12:42 PM)PhilHos Wrote: But that's not how the Democrats categorized the travel ban, is it? The point was the Dems called it xenophobic in just one of their many attempts to call Trump a racist. 

(10-27-2020, 12:43 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Did you answer the question posed or just make something up to answer? 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2020/10/22/trump-touts-his-coronavirus-china-ban-to-bash-biden-and-fauci-heres-why-thats-a-problem/#162bff8925b2

Quote:President Trump regularly touts his so-called “China ban” on travel as a huge success in curbing the virus—and claims rival Joe Biden and favorite foil Dr. Anthony Fauci both were against it—but it wasn’t really an outright ban on travel from China, Biden’s comments were unclear, and Fauci possibly suggested the travel restrictions in the first place.



KEY FACTS
On January 24, before the danger Covid-19 posed was understood, Fauci did say he and Centers for Disease Control Director Robert Redfield told senators they believed travel restrictions were “not a good idea at this time” because it would “create a lot of disruption economically and otherwise and it wouldn’t necessarily have a positive effect.”

On January 31, when Trump announced the China restrictions, Fauci said he supported the move during a White House briefing (Fauci reiterated his support three days later during an interview).

Also on January 31, Biden made an Iowa stump speech, saying in part that “this is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia — hysterical xenophobia — and fear mongering to lead the way instead of science,” which Trump later characterized as Biden calling the travel restrictions “xenophobic” (Biden repeated the line on Twitter the next day.)
It’s not clear if the Biden’s comments were directed toward the travel ban—his campaign now says it wasn’t—or past Trump comments, about China and elsewhere, largely derided as xenophobic.

While Trump would later take credit for coming up with the  restrictions, on February 7, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar tells reporters the restrictions “were the uniform recommendations of the career public health officials here at HHS” (Fauci works under HHS). 


In September, journalist Bob Woodward told NBC News the China restrictions were not Trump’s idea at all, but instead a recommendation by top health officials, including Fauci and Azar. 
CHIEF CRITIC


The Biden campaign has claimed the former vice president was not referencing Trump’s travel restriction on China during his speech in Iowa on January 31, and pointed to an op-ed Biden published in USA Today four days earlier that levies similar criticism at the president. “I remember how Trump sought to stoke fear and stigma during the 2014 Ebola epidemic,” Biden wrote on January 27, referencing a Trump tweet from 2014 about the Ebola crisis in which he called for then-President Obama to “close down flights from Ebola-infected countries” (As the Washington Post notes, there were no direct flights from Ebola-stricken parts of the world to the U.S. at that time.) Biden does go on to claim Trump was then in favor of “reactionary travel bans that would only have made things worse.” 


SURPRISING FACT 
The president has repeatedly hailed the restrictions as proof his administration responded adequately to the pandemic, often referring to the order as a “ban” on travel. However, the order was not a “ban” at all. The order exempted citizens, permanent residents and most family members. The only people who were restricted from coming into the country from China were foreign nationals who had visited China in the last 14 days. Forty-five nations implemented travel restrictions on China before the U.S. did. After Trump issued the order on China, his administration did not institute further travel restrictions until February 27. Experts later concluded a large source of the outbreak in the U.S. may have been from travelers based in Europe, not Asia. 


BIG NUMBER
40,000. That’s how many people flew from China to the United States in the two months after Trump implemented the travel restrictions on China, according to the New York Times. 

TL;DR No one politicized this but Trump and Biden never called the travel ban xenophobic.  And it wasn't even really a ban.