As he gushed over Donald Trump’s “defeat” of the COVID pandemic (and ignored the epic mismanagement), Geraldo Rivera seemed to be trying to make it up to the Fan-in-Chief after acknowledging the election is over.
Fox's The Five show opened yesterday with a discussion saluting Trump’s “modern day miracle” (as the lower-third banner read) of the coronavirus vaccine. Rivera could not have been more obsequious:
RIVERA: It’s a spectacular achievement, Dana, and I’m really torn. I have a feeling of elation on the one hand, of course, that they have done this Operation Warp Speed and we now have two vaccines ready to go by the end of this week. Americans will begin getting their inoculations. And on the other hand, Dana, I feel a tremendous sense, a profound sense of regret and melancholy.
My elation is that the vaccine is there. My regret and melancholy is the fact that Donald Trump is not gonna get credit for it. If this thing had ben six weeks ago, we would have had an entirely different presidential election. He drove this engine, he pushed these people, he was relentless. Maybe he was doing it in part for his own political fortunes but he was the engine of the pace of this remarkable breakthrough and now all of us, if we’re just patient, the vaccines are coming.
You know it was, I saw the president-elect, Joe Biden, talk about his three-point program, Dana, and one of the points is he wants to deliver a hundred vaccines in the first three months. Guess what? The Trump administration and their team just announced 20 mililion in December 30 million in January, 50 million in February. 20, 30 and 50 add up to 100 million. I wonder where Joe Biden got that figure from.
I don’t mean to be petty or partisan. I just want you to know that as his friend, even if he may not be speaking to me right now because of my position on the election being over, but I think that we, I insist that we have to recognize the role he played, the 45th president, in defeating a pandemic that has been so devastating to America and the world.
Rivera occupied the “liberal” slot that Juan Williams would normally occupy – that is if he wasn't sick with COVID-19. Yes, Rivera has announced that "we lost" the election but that hardly makes him a legit substitute for Williams. Yet Rivera slobbered over Trump, gave him a pass on his disastrous pandemic failures – including Trump’s current refusal to lift his finger to help Americans suffering under a catastrophic surge now. Worse, Rivera suggested the vaccine maker should have timed its process to help Trump win re-election.
Cohost Greg Gutfeld yammered: “You kind of wanted four more years? You got 12 years out of Trump, right? And you know this because the media is so relieved that he’s not the president elect, because he showed that he was greater than them.”
Underneath the rhapsodizing was Gutfeld’s own recognition that Trump lost the election. But cohost Dana Perino glided past that and called on cohost Jesse Watters.
WATTERS: Well, I mean, I can’t believe we’re just not talking about what Geraldo just said and that is that Geraldo and the president are no longer speaking with each other. That seems like pretty juicy gossip to me.
RIVERA: He didn’t take my calls the last two times I tried.
WATTERS: That is, that is some salacious gossip right there.
Gutfeld roared with laughter. He didn’t seem to notice, much less care that his “great” guy had just been outed as pathetically small.
You can watch it below, from the December 8, 2020 The Five.
(H/T reader Eric Jefferson)
Most experts agree that vaccine roll-out cannot but be slower than predicted by loyal Trumpers. Nobody has a magic wand, here, not even their Dear Leader. It will take several months to produce enough doses for everybody who wants to be vaccinated. The virus will then focus on those who refuse to be vaccinated. If there’s a silver lining here, it is that the latter will reapthe consequences of their own wilful ignorance.
