Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer said Friday night the implementation of a travel ban “will be done” and is “only a question of time.” The Fox News contributor also told host Greta Van Susteren that newly named “Ebola Czar” Ron Klain will not do “any good one way or another,” while also noting his appointment is “a farce.”
Greta Van Susteren: “Charles, slow to respond [on Ebola].”
Charles Krauthammer: “Slow to respond on all ways behind. You hear the administration say, well, a travel ban is not off the table. We’ve been hearing for weeks it’s a terrible idea, it will make it worse. It’s the most logical thing to do. British airways is not flying to these countries and it will be done, it’s only a question of time.”
“On the other hand, where the CDC has been assuring us ‘we know how to handle this, we know how to trace contacts.’ Yes, but they don’t know what to tell and handle the people once they have identified the contacts. You can’t tell people, as we are even now doing, to self-quarantine. Ordinary people have no idea what that means. You have to have the government step in, and I would say, this is not a thing that we like to do, override civil liberties, we’re going to have to quarantine a lot of folks that have come in contact. That’s the way you override an epidemic like this.”
Van Susteren: “You talk about tracing contact…I think it’s lousy that we’re in a position of tracing contacts. WE had notice, at least as early as March. We could have stopped, we could have headed it off before it even got here. And we could have helped a lot of people in a lot of these Western African nations. So it’s not so much how we trace the contacts. Everyone was asleep at the wheel.”
Krauthammer: “I’m not sure we could have stopped the spread in Western Africa.”
Van Susteren: “But we could have stopped it here?”
Krauthammer: “Well if we had a travel ban, if we had real control; for example, this suggestion that we heard from Sen. McCain makes perfect sense. Anybody who wants to come here to the United States, you spend 21 days in quarantine in Liberia. We’ll give you a big space, a flat screen TV, extra American food and lots of entertainment. But you gotta to wait 21 days and then you come here. That’s elementary.”
Van Susteren: “Well, I don’t see that happening. Let me turn to the question of the Czar…he’s chosen Ron Klain.”
Krauthammer: “Look, it’s a farce. It’s a public relations maneuver. Here we are looking at an epidemic and, as we heard from Byron York, there’s an official quoted in the [New York] Times today, saying that Klain was chosen because he’s good at messaging. This isn’t a messaging issues. This is an epidemic issue, a medical issue. I don’t think he’s going to do any good one way or another, I don’t think he’s going to do any harm. But it is the way the administration responds, it thinks that it’s failures on all fronts is about messaging, public relations, rather than substance.
“You want to calm the public? Show you have a handle on the epidemic, that you know how to quarantine people, that you’ll impose a ban on travel if you have to. And, one thing I don’t understand is why do they wait a day or two to release the name of a victim. If you want people to be aware of any contact, the fastest way for them to be aware is to release the name. But, of course for reasons of privacy we don’t. That is completely misplaced. We have to get out of these habits and understand we have a serious issue here.”
