Fox News Host Laura Ingraham took to Twitter yesterday to share a picture from Washington Dulles Airport in an effort to make a political point. She failed. Her tweet and the reactions to it remind me of how much I detest the season we are in.
Laura Ingraham Washington Dulles Tweet Causes A Kerfuffle
Here’s the tweet in question:
Dulles Airport midday. Think of all the lives and livelihoods liberal governors have destroyed with needless shutdowns and 24/7 panic pushing. Insane. pic.twitter.com/IIWJ7zXFnn
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) October 22, 2020
Don’t look to me to defend it, because I will not. That’s a picture of the Lufthansa counter, which of course is empty midday because it only opens three hours before check-in. Depending upon the day, LH419 to Frankfurt operates at 5:55pm or 7:00pm. Austrian flight OS94 to Vienna operates at 5:50pm. The Avianca counter next door was closed because AV239 to Bogota operates at 6:40am. The ANA counter next door would have been empty because NH101 to Tokyo Haneda departs at 12:15pm.
You get my point. The airport ticketing terminal tends to be empty at midday. Here’s a picture I took around the same place in the terminal:
…in 2015.
Jason from MilesQuest mocks Ingraham, highlighting several tweets that explain the reason the terminal is empty is because Americans cannot travel anywhere outside the country right now.
For example:
See all those international airlines Laura? They arent operating because our country’s COVID numbers are insanely high. That’s on us and that’s on Trump. Needless? Yes.. because we could have done better. All these countries look at us now with pity and confusion
— rigby (@rigby411) October 22, 2020
That’s not true either. It just wasn’t check-in time. These flights are indeed operating.
I’m not making an equivalency argument, but my goodness, I detest the partisanship and the sloppiness displayed in both tweets. I truly detest it.
So my only request today is this: be discerning. Enough with the cheap and incendiary sniping. Does that really move us forward or is that not the goal?
Can we get this election over with already?
its all about the timing….
A, C and D are insanely busy in the afternoon right now, at one point in the afternoon over our office we can see them using all 3 parallel runways for arrivals,
but …
come 630pm the same terminals are void of anyone, stores and restaurants closed, not a passenger in sight, i took a walk around whilst waiting for my transatlantic flight, with just the B gates having some passengers, my flight to LHR on BA was actually quite busy three weeks ago
rewind further to beginning of May, again having a flight to London, no one, not a soul to be found, BA again as everyone else had retreated… 15 people total on board… 15….
The best comeback is Blame Trump for Covid and pandemic. Wow that’s original. You all are debating and putting blame on everything other than the obvious truth. People are sick of hearing this crap when we lived through the last year. And those smart enough not to believe the crap being fed to us. On the news and Shi_ like this site. We watched as the Democratic party turned on Americans praised defunding the police and turned our city’s over to terrorists. For months at a time wile the media reported peaceful protests and bad cops. The problem was there were people reporting and streaming live all over. And you all still pretend it’s Trumps fault somehow? As we watched people getting shot live burning down citys literally and people dying and beaten. Had nothing to do with black lives or race. As you try to pretend! It’s on every talk show the View (totally full of it) News is just drama and fiction.CNN CNBC ECT…The only thing I believe now is live news and my brain from what I’ve seen and lived. And this post isn’t the general populations views!
As far as covid and blaming Trump. Shut the he’ll up! You dumb asses! The numbers are way up? Way more testing and kids in school ECT.. They are so high it’s Trumps fault! OH OH OH. So what? Let me explain a little something to you. A lot of people are getting covid and almost all are getting better. Most don’t even have symptoms. They have been pushing this agenda since January!! Covid is bad and does kill some. But no way in hell does the new (real) fatality rate warrant the shutdown of America. But those of us that think for ourselves kinda knew this along time ago. Yet you all are acting like you have people dyeing all over the place. I know better!! Most do. In real life!!
Well said I couldn’t have said it better.Bravo for you
Well said. No more to add.
nice
Well, this begs some response given it’s my hometown gateway.
1. It is fairly empty now all the time. That is true. Even during peak hours of 3PM-7PM it is nothing like it was before during pre-covid. As well, pre-covid, the check-in area you see was often quite busy even during off peak times. That shot you took in 2015, Matthew, was not typical. That entry area and the counters were normally always pretty busy, even mid day (albeit nothing like at 5PM, sure)
2. The major reason it is empty is given the few flights to Europe these days operating and the few passengers on them. That is not a result of anything other than Trump’s restrictions on open travel from Europe (and vice versa). Which is a direct result of his complete mishandling of the virus and allowing it to become what it is with no testing or mitigation strategy. Pipe in the people now saying that Europe is also experiencing a new wave…sure…let’s talk in a few weeks when we are still seeing our second wave in full force while Europe has squashed theirs with the proper steps needed and a unified game plan.
3. Ingraham SHOULD be saying, “Look how empty Dulles is, if only we had reacted sooner with testing and mitigation, kept the numbers down, and formed a proper strategy for people to travel (Departure and arrival testing, etc) we would have saved this industry from the dire situation it is now in.
Agreed. I worked at Dulles all of last year up until mid April when I was laid off. The sudden depression of passenger numbers made United have to shift a lot of things around. I’ve NEVER seen so many of their planes parked here at any moment until then, and it’s looking like an aircraft boneyard without planes being picked apart for spares.
I really want to return to Dulles (currently working at BWI thanks to Southwest keeping everyone busy), but I doubt I will this year or until we clamp this virus down. This dumb administration failed us bigly…
Not true. The world is full of Covid. Even Singapore airport is reportedly deserted and Singapore has few cases. Europe has more cases and deaths than the US.
Ingraham is a dullard of the highest order. Then again, she’s a former Supreme Court clerk to Justice Thomas, so I’m inclining to believe it’s all an act for the Fox News audience…
While I’m sure that the commenters denigrating the US response to the bioweapon attack on the planet initiated by the CCP could all have done a much better job at containing the bug, I still don’t see any comments as to how they would have accomplished it.
See South Korea……
We all knew she was a racist…apparently an idiot too
We are all part of the problem…
Her post was sloppy, the response was sloppy,
and the person now triangulating, indeed making an equivalency argument all contribute to our current political discussion. (And us commenters too…)
My wife was there yesterday and saw Laura, although not when she was taking pictures. Her AF flight to Paris was almost completely empty.
No matter your conclusion, if you are not responding by wondering if the exceptionally heavy costs of the lockdowns and quarantines are worth the benefits, you are asking the wrong questions and making irrelevant observations. No matter how you make that calculation, focussing on anything but that conclusion is to entirely miss the point . . . and almost everybody is missing the point and focussed on politics rather than social welfare and health.
It’s simple. There is no Health care in America for the middle class. That could be one of the reasons why so many people died in US. There is no preventive care. There is just token insurance TO SAVE YOU AFTER YOU HAVE FALLEN SICK.
The customers for Hospitals/Doctors is NOT human beings but it is Health insurance companies. Health Insurance companies decided what to pay based on their profitability for their share holders. Hospitals are corporations charging other corporations that are health insurance companies. Human beings are just middle men having no say to the costs that they are stuck to them either as out of pocket expenses or insurance premiums or TAXES.
I’m frankly more disturbed about the Christmas decorations being up before Halloween.
Mike, that was my picture from December 2015.
WHAT DO YOU EXPECT FROM FOX NEWS?
SHE IS IGNORANT!
MASK AND SOCIAL DISTANCING SAVE LIVES.
PROTECTING AMERICAN LIVES IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN MONEY!
ESPECIALLY, THE FILTY RICH!
No Matthew,
It’s not on Donald Trump and if you could think for yourself and report truthfully you would recognize that. Democratic run cities are poorly run and this is the direct byproduct of it. Why are thousands leaving Democratic municipalities to go to conservative states?! Answer: Because they can live their lives without being burdened with life altering restrictions. Get used to pictures like this because your liberal friends make ghost towns out of their cities with their policies.
Amen to that!!
Interesting. What cities are those? Being in the DMV, one of the bluest regions in the country, we enjoy a fantastic quality of life, have one of the most educated and wealthiest populations, and have been booming and growing for years attracting numerous companies, most recently Amazon. Seattle? Minneapolis? Chicago? New York City? San Francisco? Los Angeles? Atlanta? Denver? All “blue” cities that are considered some of the most vibrant and exciting cities in the world. And you have? Jackson, MS? Birmingham, AL?
Hey George…don’t be stupid, don’t you know Red states are the “takers” and Blue states are the “makers” when it comes to GDP contribution, getting receipts from the government vs. providing, etc.?
The sad part is all white Republicans have become whiny little b***hes. Tells you all you need to know how much privilege they were coasting on.
If a president picks on a first term congresswoman in a debate i think that congresswoman should run for president next. She already has so much name recognition.
George Psomos–You are right on with the correct information!!! Look at what Cuomo and Deblasio did to the elderly (5500 of them) in LiberalNYC//Bottom line it is the Chinese that did it all to us…No amount of testing will help with this horrid Chinese Virus… Stopping it at the Chinese Border would have been the only way to keep it contained…but they let thousands of people travel from China disbursing it to all over the Planet!!!!Smart(un) opinion and Mark maciuba–totally Lib brainwashed views// I assume u live in the Lib cities and states discussed!!!
Are you sure you aren’t product of the brainwashed conservative movement?
capitalizing your name now dee/dot/DEE?
enjoy your time at Trump and his hotels while they last…debt foreclosures coming 2021, Attica sentencing soon after!
While I don’t much care for Ingraham, she is not wrong to take issue with leftist fearmongering. Compare the reaction to the “Hong Kong flu” (that’s racist!) to the current state of affairs. Decades of relative peace and prosperity for the West have made us intolerant of any sort of suffering and sapped us of our equanimity. If you lived through global wars and such, a flu, deadly as it might be, probably didn’t seem so bad. Earlier generations also didn’t have to suffer through 24-hour cable news and social media. Many of those who are dying from COVID-19 were slowly killing themselves through overeating anyway. One good thing to come out of all this would be a recognition of the lethality of the obesity epidemic. Fat acceptance/body positivity kills. If people took better care of themselves, they wouldn’t need to demand that everyone else have their freedoms abrogated in the name of safety. Lockdowns aren’t worth the collateral damage.
https://nypost.com/2020/05/16/why-life-went-on-as-normal-during-the-killer-pandemic-of-1969/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/forgotten-pandemic-offers-contrast-to-todays-coronavirus-lockdowns-11587720625
Here’s something from the Lancet for those of you who don’t trust Murdoch.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31201-0/fulltext
Right…blame the million+ deaths on “being fat”. Totally nailed it. SMH.
Way to quote the Post too…quality source of journalism. Don’t forget to find links from Breitbart and 4Chan too.
Did I say obesity was the cause of all the COVID-19 deaths? Do you dispute the content of what is stated at those links? Why is the response to this pandemic so hysterical compared to previous ones? I provided a link to the Lancet, hardly a pro-Trump rag, just for people like you.
Obesity and its concomitant conditions are a far larger health problem than COVID-19. If you dispute this, you are not “following the science.” I’d say that UA-TDS should read some of Jonathan Haidt’s work, but I don’t think he would bother with anything that he doesn’t know ahead of time will confirm his biases. To quote the anti-racists, “Read some books! Do the work!”
More on obesity, COVID-19 and vaccination in general, from rabid right-wing outlets like Nature, Kaiser Health, and NPR:
How obesity could create problems for a COVID vaccine
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02946-6
America’s Obesity Epidemic Threatens Effectiveness of Any COVID Vaccine
https://khn.org/news/americas-obesity-epidemic-threatens-effectiveness-of-any-covid-vaccine/
Obesity, Race/Ethnicity, and COVID-19
https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/obesity-and-covid-19.html
The weight of obesity on the human immune response to vaccination
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4547886/
Excess Weight Can Weaken The Flu Shot
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/11/24/782079520/excess-weight-can-weaken-the-flu-shot
Of course, black folx are fat because of white supremacy, right? How about all the white fatties?
Where did I say all of the deaths from COVID-19 are due to obesity? Did you actually read what was stated at those links? I specifically included one from that rabid pro-Trump rag the Lancet for people like UA-TDS.
Is Matthew following Lucky’s lead and censoring non-leftist posts now? I realize it is controversial to say that being fat is bad for one’s health…
I don’t censor posts, except for profanity and what I deem blasphemy.
When you include more than one outside link, the comment is automatically placed in my moderation box, which I am sometimes slow to check.
Understood. I appreciate that you haven’t gone down Lucky’s route.
I was at IAD last week and found the B concourse to be near deserted in the late afternoon. TSA after the border was cramped and slow in a low-ceilinged room, though.
Whatever you say, MAGA mouth breather.
Compared to the garden variety racists who frequent this site, you seem to offer the scintilla of perceived intelligence. Yes as an obvious Trump Sycophant, you embarrass yourself by throwing the “TDS” moniker around.
Apparently if you oppose a racist, lying, misogynistic, bullying, cheating, self-enriching, nepotistic, dogmatic, totalitarian “President”, according to you, that makes you a “degenerate”.
STFD.
One doesn’t have to be a Trump voter to recognize the affliction of TDS. One can oppose both Trump and government scaremongering and overreach. I have told you repeatedly that I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, and I will not be voting for him in 2020. You are the one who embarrasses himself. All you do is spew ad hominems without ever making any substantive points. You clearly didn’t read anything that I linked to regarding the response to the current pandemic or how obesity affects COVID-19. How does citing Nature, Kaiser, the CDC, the NIH and NPR make me a racist? Surely someone as informed as you is aware that there are people who claim obesity in blacks is a symptom of white supremacy. Are you not an ally of the good Dr. Sabrina Strings? You are so overcome by your hatred of Trump that you throw all reason out the window. If you think a Trump administration is totalitarian, you have no idea what totalitarianism is. Your hyperbole is pathetic and ridiculous. You insult those who have actually lived under totalitarian regimes. Why do you think it is that people who fled to the US from the Soviet bloc overwhelmingly support the Republicans? Does my discussion of obesity offend you? Are you a fatty? You certainly seem triggered.
“Does that really move us forward or is that not the goal?,” was one of your questions. IMHO, moving us forward is not the primary goal of either side in our broken political system. I believe the primary goal of both sides is POWER and CONTROL. They’ll say it’s “power” to move the country forward, but we all know that’s generally a lie (again, on both sides). Imagine how much we could “move forward” if we had government filled with citizen-servants instead of power-hungry career politicians (on both sides).
This administration just pure greeds with absolute NO heart and NO plan, if they can help it, our border be still open and just keep blaming others instead of taking responsibility.
SHAME
https://trumpcovidplan.com/
LOL
I don’t need to take a shot at Ms. Ingraham. She’s certainly good at what she does, though I may see through it.
However, the notion of empty planes and airports is simply a myth. I’ve resumed pre pandemic levels of business travel, and the flights I’ve been on have been as full as ever. My upgrades clear, but not at any greater frequency than before. Some I’ve missed (DFW-LBB on a Monday) have been downright surprising.
In fact, I’ve pretty much written off any chances of an upgrade on my home stretch of AUS-DFW. While it used to be challenging at peak times, it was never impossible, as it is nowadays for this EXP.
Yes, upgrades have suddenly become very difficult.
I’ve been getting upgraded on shorter domestic routes on UA and TATL routes seem to have plenty of upgrade space as well. To Ingraham’s point, capacity cuts are causing the crowded domestic flights, not a return to pre-pandemic levels of business. I flew FRA-IAD J last week and it was 10/44.
TATL is still very easy. But hub-hub much harder, not that I have been traveling too much (I just watch space).
The culture wars are just starting. Trump is only a symptom.
Stay tuned. The division is going to get a lot worse.