On Sunday morning, Eric Trump appeared on ABC’s This Week to chat about his father, Donald Trump, and his father’s experience with the novel coronavirus. Of course, he also made time to rant about protests where, as he describes it, people are “literally burning down cities” and claim that “antifa is going wild.” The younger Trump made a few eyebrow-raising statements about his father’s experience with the virus that has killed more than 200,000 Americans and more than 1 million people worldwide, including misspeaking and saying his father received a “vaccine.” When host Jon Karl asked for clarity on Eric Trump’s claim that his father had taken a vaccine, the son corrected himself and said that he meant the “medicines” his father been given while treated at Walter Reed Military Medical Center.
Karl also let viewers know that Dr. Anthony Fauci apparently was willing to participate in the show this morning, but allegedly wasn’t allowed to. Why not? As Karl put it: “The White House wouldn't allow you to hear from the nation's leading expert on coronavirus.”
Let’s check out the clips below.
Karl asked Eric Trump “how bad” Trump’s experience with the virus got, referencing a statement Trump made to Rush Limbaugh in which he suggested there was a time he thought he might not make it.
Eric Trump stated his father “got hit hard” that first Friday, and that “it's never fun watching your father fly off to Walter Reed on Marine One,” and that it’s “a day that no son wants to remember, that's no fun to watch. But I'm telling you, I spoke to him three times that next Saturday … The guy sounded 100%, it was amazing. It actually probably goes to speak to how good some of these vaccines that are being created are and what my father's done on the vaccine front no one could have done.” He then barreled forward and brought up Democratic nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden and China, because of course.
“My father literally started day one creating this vaccine,” he stated, “he worked to push this vaccine and now my father just took it and you see how well he got over it."
Karl asked Trump’s son to wait and said: “Can you clarify that. You said your father just took a vaccine?”
And Eric Trump replied: “Meaning when he was in Walter Reed. The medicines that he was taking.”
”The therapeutics,” Karl said.
”He sounded tremendous,” Eric continued, praising the “power of medicine in this country” and “how far we’ve come on COVID in the last six, seven months.”
Of course, in an ideal—or even mildly acceptable—world, the American public would not be relying on the children of sitting presidents to relay details of their health and fitness for office. We would be getting transparent information from the president’s physician, who, for example, has yet to explicitly say Trump has tested negative for the virus. The fact that Eric Trump babbled about a “vaccine” and antifa is only icing on a surreal, shameful cake.
And also on This Week, Karl claimed that Dr. Fauci, a trusted, leading expert on the coronavirus, wanted to participate in today’s segment but the White House did not allow him to.
“In fact,” Karl stated, “they wouldn't allow any of the medical experts on the president's own coronavirus task force to appear on this show."
In a tweet, Karl referred to this as a “muzzle.”
Not remotely comforting, but in this administration, also not remotely surprising.
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Update: Karl also posted some receipts on Twitter.
