LIVE BLOG: Trump “news conference” same bleachy whitewash, different day
By annieli on April 27, 2020
Live Blog below.
Summary: any attempt to “change” the pattern for these events was lost today. It had no different structure than other COVID taskforce briefings. It was the same as before. Trump blamed others and lied again. The biggest lies related to the reality of testing in terms of rates per thousand / million. Testing lags remain. Testing will not double for at least another month, if at all.
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Signal moment.
A reporter asks Pence why today's Rose Garden predictions for doubling of testing should be believed, given track record.
Notes that back on March 10, Pence promised 4 million tests by the end of the following week.
Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Trump plans to brief the nation on the new guidance and “other announcements about safely opening up America again.” The announcement came roughly two and a half hours after the White House canceled a planned 5 p.m. press conference for the president’s coronavirus task force.
[…]
The White House issued updated guidance shortly thereafter noting a 5 p.m. news conference in the Rose Garden. It is unclear whether the president will field questions from reporters at the press conference or whether other individuals will participate in the press conference.
The event was added hours after McEnany told Fox News in an interview Monday morning that there would not be a briefing Monday and that Trump would instead hold a press availability during a meeting with executives on COVID-19. The White House then canceled the coronavirus briefing, which had been scheduled for 5 p.m. in the press briefing room.
HA HA HA HA. the presidential snit fit lasted exactly two days. if you had “the fragile narcissist won't be able to go 48 hours without jumping in front of a camera” on your Donald Trump Batcrappery Bingo card, you win
“Trump has an ignominious super power: He is completely unencumbered by the truth, the need to tell it or accept it. He will do and say anything that he believes will help him. He has no greater guiding principles.”—Charles Blow
Drinking Mercurial.
“As one of the few aides Trump implicitly trusts, the former White House communications director urged the president to act as a frontman for the #coronavirus crisis.”
Hope Hicksreturned to the White House in February as a“counselorto the president.” It's not been a roaring success. Hicks slinked back from California shortly after Donald Trump skated onimpeachmentcharges, which might turn out to have been the high point of Trump's last — we hope — year in office. She now reports to Jared Kushner, whose brain trust has onlybungled everything it's touchedregarding the COVID-19 response.
Politicoreportsthat Hicks “urged the president to act as a frontman for the coronavirus crisis,” and unless the coronavirus crisis is a thrash metal band, that was an incredibly stupid idea. She believed the president, who let's not forget is Donald Trump, “could offer calming messages, critical health information and important updates on the progress of the White House's response efforts.” Is she trying to undermine him? Trump was better off just letting Dr. Anthony Fauci speak while nodding sagely in the distance or repeating whateverDr. Deborah Birxsaid as if it was his own idea. Men have done this to women at business meetings for decades. Instead, thepresident's pitchingTrump Brand COVID-19 Bleach Away.
It's an approach in perpetual flux, thanks largely to amercurial presidentwho acts on his own instincts, prefers the spotlight in the crisis and offers up rhetoric often designed more for his base than the masses in the midst of an unprecedented situation.
That's cute. The media is still soft-selling Trump's bananapants behavior: He's just “mercurial,” like an 18th Century romantic poet. Meanwhile, Trump appears to be just a few press briefings away from recommending we ingest mercury: The 'rona won't stand a chance!
By far the most recurring utterances from Mr. Trump in the briefings areself-congratulations,roughly 600 of them, which are often predicated onexaggerations and falsehoods.He doescredit others(more than 360 times) for their work, but he alsoblames others(more than 110 times) for inadequacies in the state and federal response.
Mr. Trump’s attempts todisplay empathy or appeal to national unity(about 160 instances) amount to only a quarter of the number of times he complimented himself or a top member of his team.
Blames others
Speaks falsely or exaggerates
Uses unifying language or attempts empathy
But his laments about the virus’s economic toll — the damage it has caused “probably the best economy in the history of the world” — are far more common than remarks about the human toll. “It’s the things that are not there, the things he isn’t doing,” said Roderick P. Hart, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who is an expert in political speech. “It’s what’s not there — that sense of, ‘I’m part of the human condition,’ the ability to empathize with the downtrodden and the afflicted — that’s what’s so important.”
One thing that stood out in reviewing 13 hours of Trump's press briefing commentary was how often he made the same points over and over again. https://t.co/IWSbsnnt8x
Must-read advice from former White House press secretary @joelockhart. His advice to “work together as a group” is exactly what the Beijing foreign press corps did against its common adversary, the Chinese state. Unfortunately that applies in the US now. https://t.co/bExoGJiG8m
I admit that I didn't see, “oh look here's proof of aliens” getting a round in trump's favorite game, “watch me try to change the narrative” https://t.co/qA5PvlQHOe
— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) April 27, 2020
This happened at the last Rose Garden presser
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Of all the #COVID19 deaths in the world, ð¨ð¯ðžð« ðŸÂðŸ“% have been in the United States.
We are 4% of the global population.
— Craig Spencer MD MPH (@Craig_A_Spencer) April 27, 2020
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These are the leaders in history who used the phrase “the enemy of the people”:
Stalin Hitler Mao Chavez Mugabe Trump
It was too extreme for the later Soviets. In 1956, Khrushchev retired the term, saying it was just aimed at annihilating those who disagreed with Stalin. https://t.co/c9RWbNhMmK
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