Wendy Bell, Coronavirus Denier, On Who's A "Hack"

Yesterday, KDKA Radio's Wendy Bell tweeted:

Listening to President’s daily press briefing. I’ve come to one conclusion. Jonathan Karl from ABC News is a self aggrandizing hack.

— Wendy Bell (@WendyBellPgh) April 27, 2020

Um, so what happened with Jonathan Karl on April 27?

Admiral Giroir had just responded to a question about Coronavirus testing with some very healthy numbers. That's when Jonathon Karl asked this:

But we sat here in the Rose Garden, back on March 13, and these companies were here, some other companies were here. By my count, only 69 drive-through test sites have been set up by the companies that were here.

I’m wondering if you — and, of course, Mr. Vice President, back in early March, you said we’d be at 4 million tests by the following week. We’re just now got there in the last few days.

So what have you learned about what went wrong, you know, a month and a half — or over the last month and a half or two months?

For the record, there are 45 days between March 13 and April 27.

And this is how Vice President Pence responded:

Jon, I appreciate the question, but it represents a misunderstanding on your part and the — and frankly, the — a lot of people in the public’s part about the difference between having a test versus the ability to actually process the test. [Emphasis added.]

What???

Let's go back to the March briefing where the 4 million tests thing was floated and actually it's March 9  (so I guess that proves Bell is right - Jonathan Karl IS a hack!!).

Pence says:

We also met today in a conference call with 47 of America’s governors. We were able to brief them on the latest — the progress that we’ve made. We were able to confirm with them that testing is now available in all state labs in every state in the country. Over a million tests have been distributed. Before the end of this week, another 4 million tests will be distributed. But as I said before, with the deployment of the commercial labs, we literally — we literally are going to see a dramatic increase in the available — availability of testing, and that’s all a direct result of the President’s leadership.

This is the context surrounding Karl's question of April 27 (and, by extension, Wendy Bell's pronouncement of Karl's hackitude).
So allow me to paraphrase. Karl, with the understanding that these would be processed tests, said that the administration had promised 4 million tests per week. To which Trump-booster Pence responded by pointing out that when he said what he said he only meant that there'd be 4 million available tests.

As CNN's Daniel Dale points out, this is a lie by omission:

Vice President Mike Pence claimed on Monday that much of the American public has a "misunderstanding" of his March 9 claim that 4 million coronavirus tests would be distributed by the end of that week. Pence was doing again on Monday what he had done on March 9 and has done regularly since: leaving out a critical piece of information. This time, he failed to explain that it had been his own words that created the "misunderstanding" -- instead laying the confusion at the feet of the media and average citizens.

Pence's comments on the subject of testing, including the remarks he was asked about on Monday, have consistently painted a picture that is far rosier than the actual situation on the ground.

Unlike President Donald Trump, Pence has not been flat lying. Rather, he has misled by omission.

Adding:

If Pence had wanted to make clear on March 9 that he did not mean 4 million people could actually get tested fast, he could have said so. Instead, he conveniently omitted it.

A lie of omission.

Elsewhere in the briefing, Pence announces:

And let me ask the Secretary of HHS to give us the latest on the availability of testing to the American public and at the states.

Secretary Azar frames his remarks with:

Great. Thank you, Mr. Vice President. So we continue with our strategic plan at HHS, across all of the components represented by many of the leaders here, which is to diagnose, to treat, to contain, to mitigate, to research, and communicate. It’s what we do in a healthcare crisis situation.

And then finally gets to:

We, by the end of this week, expect to be able to be producing up to 4 million tests per week in the United States.

Note how even Secretary Azar's used the verb "producing" in his remarks - so the lie isn't just Pence. Azar knew what they were doing as well.

So Jonathan Karl stumbles into a huge lie of omission by the Trump administration and instead of pointing out the dishonesty, KDKA Radio's Wendy Bell dutifully calls ABC's Jonathan Karl a "hack" instead.

But then again, this is the human being who is "on a fence" about whether it's a good idea keep the economy locked down "for less than one percent of our population, many of whom are already ill? Or aged?"

Wendy Bell is a vile cruel person.

Maybe someday she can call me a hack in public.

Wendy, with 55,000 dead so far (a crisis made much worse by the actions and inactions of Donald J. Trump) it would be a badge of honor, snowflake. A badge of honor.