I don’t know about you, but when I want my life saved, it’s by an appropriately diverse group of people. If they’re not diverse enough, then they’re not allowed to save my life.

Period.

At least that’s how CNN feels in what is, probably, their dumbest hot take of the month.

On Tuesday, Trump tweeted photos of a briefing he’d received on the new coronavirus spreading out of China.

“We will continue to monitor the ongoing developments,” the President said in his post. “We have the best experts anywhere in the world, and they are on top of it 24/7!”

Who are these experts? They’re largely the same sorts of white men (and a couple women on the sidelines) who’ve dominated the Trump administration from the very beginning.

By contrast, former President Barack Obama’s circle of advisers in the face of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa was hardly so monochromatic. Neither was it so abysmal in terms of gender diversity

I’m not sure why we have an urgent need for diversity when fighting a virus.

But CNN’s comparison of the Obama and Trump photos just focuses on Jeh Johnson and Susan Rice. Aside from Obama, those were the only black people in the photo.

By comparison, Dr. Ben Carson is black, but, despite being a doctor, HUD wouldn’t belong at a coronavirus briefing, so he wouldn’t be there. 

CNN is zooming in on a structure based on the current crisis and the departments likely to be involved in it.

Also CNN, as if often likes to remind us, is a joke. And so it decided to go with this freshman journalism that would hardly have passed muster at a college paper a decade ago.