On March 8, after more press reports about shortcomings in the administration’s response, Trump tweeted, “The Fake News Media is doing everything possible to make us look bad. Sad!” The next day, after the Dow Jones Index lost 2,014 points, or 7.79 percent, of its value, the president also blamed it on “fake news.” In a March 18 tweet, Trump insisted, “I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously” and “the Fake News new narrative is disgraceful & false.” At contentious White House COVID-19 press briefings on March 19 and 20, he again angrily attacked the news media, saying that “the press is very dishonest” in its reporting on his handling of the crisis and that journalists “truly do hurt our country.”

A white whale

There was a fishy flavor to the milk, too, which I could not at all account for, till one morning happening to take a stroll along the beach among some fishermen’s boats, I saw Hosea’s brindled cow feeding on fish remnants, and marching along the sand with each foot in a cod’s decapitated head, looking very slip-shod, I assure ye.