Media top headlines December 15
In media news today, Andrew Cuomo gets ordered to return millions from his pandemic book deal, CNN fires a senior producer charged with inducing minors for sex, and ESPN gets dragged for reviving debunked narrative that Bubba Wallace found a 'noose' in his NASCAR garage
The Atlantic's David Frum continued to push for hospitals and doctors to treat unvaccinated patients last during his appearance on CNN on Wednesday.
The Atlantic staff writer was featured on CNN’s "New Day" where co-host Brianna Keilar invited Frum to argue for his "provocative" suggestion that she’s "sure a lot of people agree with." Frum began by blaming "politicians and personalities" who apparently want to hurt President Biden and the Democratic Party.
"So, we have this terrible problem, and it is being incited and preserved by politicians and media personalities who, for agendas of their own, they want to slow the recovery from the pandemic, they want to hurt the president, they want to hurt the president's party," Frum said.
CNBC’S JIM CRAMER SLAMMED FOR CLAIMING GOVERNMENT ‘HAS A RIGHT’ TO FORCE PEOPLE TO OBEY IT
A sign about COVID-19 testing is displayed outside of COVID-19 testing site as a health walker collects testing tube in Wheeling, Ill., Friday, Dec. 3, 2021. A week after Thanksgiving, Illinois on Thursday reported this year's highest daily total of new coronavirus cases, while COVID-19 hospitalizations have risen higher than any point since last winter. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh) (AP)
Frum defended his tweets where he first suggested unvaccinated patients be a lower priority, said he "wasn't writing a management treatise on hospital emergency rooms" but only expressing his frustrations against people who choose to remain unvaccinated from the coronavirus.
"I wasn't writing a management treatise on hospital emergency rooms. This was a tweet where I was trying to give voice to the [inaudible] frustration that people who have been doing the right thing feel toward people who are doing the wrong thing," Frum said.
(https://www.mrctv.org/videos/cnn-frum-defends-proposal-give-emergency-care-last-unvaccinated)
On Sunday, Frum listed several steps the country could take to combat the coronavirus and one of them, he suggested, "Let hospitals quietly triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last."
On CNN, Frum voiced his frustration further by calling out unvaccinated people to stop acting as victims.
"But every once in a while, if you're in my business where you can say what's true and sometimes on Twitter where it's a little more informally, you can say, you know what, you guys are imposing a lot of costs on everybody else. You're not in the right here. Quit feeling so dam*ed sorry for yourself all the time," Frum said. "The pervasive attitude that one minority group in society who have the option, who could do the right thing, and who are refusing to, as you say, they're being lied to. But they also have agency. They could make better choices. Those costs, no one can even mutter against them, I muttered a little."
Los Angeles, CA - December 14:Parents opposed to LAUSD's student vaccine mandate rally outside the district office in Los Angeles while the school board meets on enforcement of the mandate on Tuesday, December 14, 2021. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images) (Sarah Reingewirtz/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images)
Keilar ended the segment seemingly agreeing with Frum’s argument and claiming that "people are interested" in what he said.
"Look, I hear you, I hear that desire to kind of want to just shake someone into the realization of what they can do for themselves and for others. It's extremely infuriating at times. And I think a lot of people are interested by your comments," Keilar said.
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Frum’s tweet specifically advised hospitals to "quietly triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last" in order to raise vaccination levels beyond vaccine mandates. In a follow-up tweet, he criticized backlash to his comments.
"Reading the reactions to this tweet, I am impressed by the immense self-pity of the anti-vaxxers - who see themselves as bottomless victims, even as their own bad choices deny hospital care to so many others in desperate need. If, at this point, you are still unvaccinated, you are not a victim. You are a cause of the victimization of vulnerable others," he wrote.
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