Former Fox News reporter Carl Cameron urged viewers to follow medical and scientific experts’ advice on the coronavirus pandemic not Donald Trump’s dangerous “hunches.”
In case you’re not familiar with “Campaign Carl” Cameron, as he was known during his lengthy career at Fox, he is no liberal. He’s Fox’s former chief political correspondent and you know he didn’t reach that status by admiring Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. If you saw 2004's (still relevant) Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, you probably remember the scene in which Cameron schmoozes with George W. Bush, saying that his wife has been “hanging out” with Bush’s sister and that the two have been campaigning "all over the state" together. (Full disclosure I and the other original members of this blog served as researchers for the film.)
Cameron left Fox after more than two decades there because of the “partisan misinformation” about “conman” Trump from its right-wing hosts. He joined a progressive website called Front Page Live that aims to counter the right-wing spin machine. Cameron's "Typhoid Trump" comments were made in a video for that site.
Cameron began his March 25, 2020 video by noting that New York City and Madrid, Spain have overtaken Lombardi, Italy as “the globe’s most coronavirus-infected city in the world.”
In perhaps the harshest blow to Trump’s ever-needy ego, Cameron held up New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (a Democrat) as everything a leader at this time should be and everything Trump is not. Cameron praised Cuomo’s “fact-based daily briefings on national TV” and called him a “strong example of responsible and responsive crisis leadership based on facts and science.”
In his next breath, Cameron shredded Trump as the opposite:
"By contrast, Trump is sharing what he has described as 'hunches' while ignoring the physical distancing his administration is warning all of us to obey. Trump’s repeatedly asserted that the pandemic will be quickly crushed. That is absolutely wrong."
After urging everyone to follow the advice of the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization, Cameron warned people against listening to Trump.
"Our people and our politicians must listen to and follow advice from medical experts. Politicians, or anyone, ignoring science and espousing "hunches" are the modern equivalent of Typhoid Mary….look it up and don’t be that!"
In case you don’t know who Typhoid Mary is, The Washington Post explains here. TLDR: She spread typhoid among some of New York’s wealthiest families and refused to believe what doctors told her when they traced the outbreaks to her.
You can watch Cameron’s March 25, 2020 comments below.
@BrittMcHenry
It’s difficult to see people argue there was little time to react to Coronavirus. Since I work in media, I’ve known how deadly it was in China since late November-December. US didn’t restrict travel, or take preventative measures. If we knew, govt knew.