Likely anyone with an interest in the U.S. Constitution and the deeper threads of liberty already figured this one out: most old guard media figures are either extremely ignorant of the national “rules,” or they simply don’t care.
And that was on full display over the weekend when President Trump told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that he would not impose a nation-wide “mask mandate” as part of his response to COVID19.
Which is nice of Trump to say, since he, like everyone else in D.C. and in every state government, has absolutely no constitutional or moral authority to issue such a command and is, in fact, prohibited from doing so according to the Bill of Rights.
A few media figures understand this. In fact, when segments of the Trump interview reached the public on July 17, FoxNews’ Laura Ingraham Tweeted:
Outrage! Pres Trump said he wouldn’t do a national mask mandate. (By what possible legal authority could the President order everyone to wear masks?!)
And she nailed it.
But Mr. Wallace appears to be less cognizant of the Constitution Trump swore to protect and defend, or, as noted before, he doesn’t care. Because in their interview, the entirety of which was broadcast Sunday, Wallace fervently pressed the question of whether the President would issue such a mandate.
Do you regret not wearing a mask from the start, and would you consider – will you consider – a national mandate that people need to wear masks?
Memo to Mr. Wallace: Trump can’t do that, so why even ask if he’ll “consider” it? If you really wanted to investigate the issue, you could say something along the lines of, “What do you have to say to those people who want a national mask mandate?” Or, Chris, you could say, “I was reading my handy-dandy pocket Constitution, and I couldn’t find any enumerated power in it that allows you to mandate mask-wearing. Am I reading the wrong set of rules?”
Sadly, Mr. Wallace didn’t take that approach. He also didn’t put a lot of thought into something else he mentioned on Fox when they teased the interview. Avoiding the constitutional barrier to a mandate while speaking to Brett Behr on July 17, Wallace referred to “new cases” of COVID19:
The whole question, the President arguing that a lot of that is because of more testing…
And, in the classic pop media game of Fake Gotya, Wallace engaged in his own form of ex post facto debate: taking something Trump said, and offering his own retort.
But while testing is up 37%, the new cases are up by 193%, which would seem to indicate the virus is spreading.
The trouble is that Wallace, like many of his pop media comrades, is guilty of the same error he implies is evident in Trump’s answer. He neglects to mention another huge source of false “cases” stemming from the federal government and various state governments literally incentivizing medical workers to list as “positive” those who have not actually shown “positive” for COVID19 at all. As I have reported, and as video evidence from Texas confirms, health care workers have been told to list what they think could be “probable” COVID19 cases as actual cases, and the federal government “reimburses” hospitals more if they list patients as COVID19 confirmations, even if they are not. (By the way, there’s nothing in the Constitution that lets the feds “reimburse” medical centers for services unless Congress has declared War and the medical centers are handling soldiers or something for that War.)
But even if the cases are increasing – and, again, this is literally impossible to know – the fatality rate for COVID19 is near that of the seasonal flu. Since, at any given time, a certain cadre of the American populace is immunocompromised, will Wallace ask every President he interviews if he – or she – will mandate masks every year?
The infantilism of his line of questioning is remarkable. But it is not as remarkable as those who insist that others wear N95 masks even when they cannot back up their demands with real studies to show that such masks are effective. These would be studies that might tilt the balance in favor of the myth that a mask designed to stop 95 percent particles of .3 microns or larger can stop a virus that is .1 micron in size, and studies which would also have to counter the darker side – something that Trump correctly noted to Wallace: for some people, the masks are harmful.
As reporter Ben Swann has noted, there already have been three studies and two macro-studies (strangely, I find no indication that the National Institutes of Health’s Dr. Anthony Fauci has discussed them in public) indicating no correlation between the use of N95 masks and decreased coronavirus or influenza infection for the wearer. In fact, some research indicates that the masks could be harmful if worn for long stretches of time.
Swann observed studies by researchers in Japan (2009), as well as British, US, and international studies conducted in 2010, a macro-study, from 2011 covering coronaviruses and influenza, a study from 2016, an Oxford publication from 2017, and another meta-analysis conducted in 2019 and published in 2020.
And, despite the fact that Twitter burnouts savaged Trump for telling Wallace that, “as you know, masks cause problems, too,” Mr. Trump is perfectly in line with the Japanese researchers, who said:
…subjects in the mask group were significantly more likely to experience headache during the study period.
Now, if I can report this information, if Benn Swann can supply this to his viewers, one might think that Mr. Wallace would be able to do so as well.
Instead, he seems more in line with the Joe Biden, who claimed he would mandate masks if he could, with Twitter mob, and even with pop minds at the BBC, who also appeared stunned that Trump would not MANDATE MASKS. In their sickening July 18 Tweet, Aunty Beeb actually wrote:
Trump refuses to order Americans to wear masks
Which, as Wallace’s line of questioning and his set-up with Behr reflected, implies that Trump has such power – which he does not – and that he is somehow reticent in NOT mandating that people live the way they want him to tell them to live.
This kind of manipulative and erroneous so-called “reporting” is beneath contempt, and you can tell FoxNewsSunday what you think of Wallace’s slips and Ingraham’s correct take by contacting them on Twitter. The show’s Twitter handle is @FoxNewsSunday.
Who knows, perhaps Chris Wallace will agree to sit down to an interview with you or agree to go back to school to learn a bit about the Constitution.