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Acting intel director backhands WaPo for false reporting: ‘This isn’t true. We told you before you wrote it.’

April 28, 2020 | | Print Article

At some point, you might think that professional journalists and reporters would grow weary of being used as political pawns by Deep State actors out to ‘get’ President Donald Trump, but that doesn’t seem to be the case at the Washington Post.

Maybe that’s because the Post — and the rest of the ‘mainstream media’ cabal — are all in it together.

Late Monday, two of the paper’s national security correspondents, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller, claimed that the was repeatedly briefed early on about the coronavirus threat, but ‘downplayed’ it and refused to act in a timely manner, which has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.

The reporters wrote:

U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the President’s Daily Brief, a sensitive report that is produced before dawn each day and designed to call the president’s attention to the most significant global developments and security threats. …

But the alarms appear to have failed to register with the president, who routinely skips reading the PDB and has at times shown little patience for even the oral summary he takes two or three times per week, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified material. 

The advisories being relayed by U.S. spy agencies were part of a broader collection of worrisome signals that came during a period now regarded by many public health officials and other experts as a squandered opportunity to contain the outbreak.

Translation: Because Trump hesitated, the coronavirus pandemic is his fault.

These outrageous and patently false claims were immediately swatted down by Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, who blasted the Post for purposely publishing information the reporters were told was incorrect.

“This isn’t true. And we told you this before you wrote. And you put the DNI denial of your premise in paragraph 9,” Grenell tweeted.

The paragraph in particular says:

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is responsible for the PDB. In response to questions about the repeated mentions of coronavirus, a DNI official said, “The detail of this is not true.” The official declined to explain or elaborate.

‘Declined to explain or elaborate?’ What else is there to say besides, ‘Hey, that allegation isn’t true’?

As to the president’s known actions — which are not in despite — let’s recap.

The Post claims that, according to its ‘sources,’ President Trump was receiving classified warnings about the spread of coronavirus “in January and February.”

Recall that the president issued a travel ban from China on Jan. 31, the first major world leader to do so. And as Fox News reported earlier this month, Democrats blasted him for the decision, calling it “xenophobic” — before changing their tune a month later as the disease began ravaging parts of the country:

Within hours of President Trump’s decision to restrict travel from China on Jan. 31, top Democrats and media figures immediately derided the move as unnecessary and xenophobic — and they are now beating a hasty retreat from that position as the coronavirus continues to ravage the economy and cause scores of deaths.

Trump issued the restriction one day after the hapless World Health Organization finally got around to declaring the virus a global emergency.

“I do think we were very early, but I also think that we were very smart because we stopped China,” the president said earlier this month during one of his coronavirus press conferences. “That was probably the biggest decision we made so far.”

The same day, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar declared a national health emergency due to the virus. That was followed by the president’s national emergency declaration in mid-March.

And wasn’t House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — third in line to the presidency and member of the Gang of Eight — telling constituents in San Francisco’s Chinatown district in late February they had nothing to fear from coronavirus?

The facts are, the president acted decisively in response to the burgeoning pandemic when the situation demanded it. This is a matter of public record.

What’s disgusting is the Post is actually blaming our president for a pandemic that began in China, yet the paper displays no similar animosity or contempt for Beijing’s Communist regime, even though the ChiComs purposely hid the extent and seriousness of the disease.

When Trump says ‘the media’ are ‘enemies of the people,’ this last Post hit piece is exactly what he’s talking about.

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Jon Dougherty
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