For those who haven’t been following the conversation on the right about Australia, Donald Trump’s recent entry into the chat might have been a little baffling.On Friday, the former president put out a statement that included only this tweet, from the conservative columnist Scott Morefield: “I don’t think it’s far-fetched to say that if Donald Trump hadn’t won in 2016 and appointed three SCOTUS justices, the U.S. would literally be Australia right now.”Coming just after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority blocked President Biden’s vaccine mandate for large businesses, the first half of Morefield’s tweet speaks for itself. But the second half, the context-free swipe at Australia, requires some explaining.Over the past few months, Australia — Western-allied, democratic Australia — has become a byword among conservatives for an over-the-top approach to combating the coronavirus pandemic. The government there has used aggressive vaccine mandates, quarantines, border restrictions and lockdowns to keep Covid-19 deaths below 3,000 people in a country of 25 million, with some trade-offs in personal freedoms.But the commentary on the American right has made Australia out to be some kind of authoritarian state:In National Review, the flagship magazine of mainstream conservative thought, various headlines have read “When Will Someone Hold Human-Rights Hearings on Australia?,” “Australians Are Suffering from Excessive COVID Lockdowns,” and “When a Western Society Goes Insane.”A Sept. 9 article in The Federalist declared: “The once free and open Australian continent has effectively become a giant prison for its 26 million residents.”That same month, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida mused aloud: “Is Australia freer than China, communist China, right now? I don’t know. The fact that that’s even a question tells you something has gone dramatically off the rails with some of this stuff.”On Sept. 30, Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, devoted 12 minutes of his show to Australia, documenting its supposed slide into authoritarianism. “One moment the English-speaking world is mocking China for being dystopian and autocratic,” he warned. “The next moment they’re aping China and hunting people down who are two blocks from their homes and smoking a cigarette.”Two months later, Carlson referred to a quarantine facility in Darwin, Australia, as a “Covid concentration camp.”In October, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, got into an exchange with the leader of Australia’s Northern Territory after tweeting, “I’ve always said Australia is the Texas of the Pacific. The Covid tyranny of their current government is disgraceful & sad. Individual liberty matters. I stand with the people of #Australia.”In November, Joe Rogan, mistaking satire for a real ad, posted on his Instagram account: “Not only has Australia had the worst reaction to the pandemic with dystopian, police-state measures that are truly inconceivable to the rest of the civilized world, but they also have the absolute dumbest propaganda.”These concerns prompted Van Badham, an Australian journalist, to fire back in a guest opinion essay for The New York Times entitled: “No, Australia Is Not Actually an Evil Dictatorship.”The comparisons died down for a while, but the recent standoff between Novak Djokovic and Australian tennis authorities over the Serbian star’s refusal to vaccinate has brought the topic raging back. Trump and DeSantis are also shadowboxing over their respective records on Covid, ahead of a possible clash in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, so the fact that both have mentioned Australia is especially interesting.Our man in Sydney
But what’s really happening in Australia? To get some ground truth, we chatted with Damien Cave, the Australia bureau chief for The New York Times. In recent months, Cave has explored how Australians have reacted to the country’s zero-tolerance Covid policies. He also wrote about his experience at a quarantine camp.Recent Developments at Fox News
Fauci CommentsThe Fox News host Jesse Watters used notably violent language in urging a gathering of conservatives to publicly confront Dr. Anthony Fauci.Jan. 6 TextsThree prominent Fox News hosts — Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade — texted Mark Meadows during the Jan. 6 riot urging him to tell Donald Trump to try to stop it.Chris Wallace Departs: The anchor’s announcement that he was leaving Fox News for CNN came as right-wing hosts have increasingly set the channel's agenda.Contributors Quit: Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes quit the network in protest over Tucker Carlson's “Patriot Purge” special.How are things there in Australia? Can you tell us how the country is dealing with the pandemic right now?Case numbersBy: Blake Hounshell and Leah Askarinam
Title: Why Trump and DeSantis Are Talking About Australia
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2022/01/18/us/politics/trump-desantis-covid-australia.html
Published Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2022 00:00:05 +0000
Read More
Did you miss our previous article...
https://badpoliticians.com/us-politics/harry-reid-from-capitol-cop-to-powerhouse-senate-majority-lead
UK PoliticsWorld PoliticsVideosPrivacy PolicyTerms And Conditions
