Laura Ingraham on Thursday either forgot about or conveniently ignored the many documented instances of hoarding that occurred early in the COVID-19 pandemic when, during a segment criticizing the Biden administration over supply chain issues, she asked why “didn’t we have” it during the Trump years.
Ingraham began a panel discussion with Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) and conservative author Horace Cooper by mentioning the troubling shortage of baby formula. (That shortage is partly due to the FDA closing a Michigan manufacturing plant amid an investigation into the deaths of at least two babies and bacterial infections linked to powdered formula produced there.) The Fox host claimed that “rather than fixing this issue that’s really striking at the heart of so many people… the Biden administration is just doing the usual gaslighting.”
Ingraham then played a clip of White House press secretary Jen Psaki addressing the issue. Psaki told reporters that “what we are seeing—which is an enormous problem—is hoarding, people hoarding because they are fearful.” She later said, “We are also calling on retailers to impose purchasing limits to prevent the possibility of hoarding because we know that that is an issue.”
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Ingraham responded to Psaki’s remarks by asking, “Why didn’t we have hoarding during the Trump administration?”
Of course, hoarding did occur under Trump, also at a juncture when many people were fearful: the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In March 2020, The New York Times reported on a Tennessee man who had “17,700 bottles of hand sanitizer and nowhere to sell them.” The next month, the Justice Department felt compelled to put out a statement saying it was receiving “reports of persons using the coronavirus crisis to stockpile urgently needed medical supplies to make windfall profits at the expense of public health and safety.” Later in April, a New York man was charged under the Defense Production Act for allegedly hoarding and price gouging several tons’ worth of personal protective equipment. And who could forget the hoarding of toilet paper, which was widely reported on during the spring of 2020.
If an opportunity to land a dig at the current administration while puffing up the last one is on the table—as it is every night on her network—then it seems Ingraham surely can.
