Last week, at long last, the United States woke up to the threat of a global pandemic. The stock market tanked, as investors began to doubt the Trump administration’s ability to handle the coronavirus. Sales of masks soared as cities across the country began to report new cases. On Saturday, Washington state reported the first American fatality, with five more following over the next two days.

Though not known for its sober, measured approach to current events, the conservative media has been clear in its response: Everything is fine.



Rush Limbaugh, who was recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, told his audience of millions that the virus is really just the “common cold.” He claimed that it was being overhyped by the director of the National Center of Immunization—who just happens to be the sister of former acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a bad guy in the world of conservative infotainment, thanks to his role in the Mueller investigation—to damage the president.



Fox News host Laura Ingraham dismissed the fear about a potential pandemic as “a new pathway for hitting President Trump,” and speculated that it had been engineered by China as payback for the president’s trade war.



Fox News’s Sean Hannity said on Thursday that there was little to be afraid of—no Americans had died, he noted, days before they inevitably did—and that the virus was simply the latest desperate anti-Trump ploy from Democrats. Having struck out on impeachment, they were now “sadly politicizing and weaponizing an infectious disease as their next effort to bludgeon President Trump.”

