US President Donald Trump has fired off a scathing broadside at mainstream media, accusing them of peddling a false claim that he branded coronavirus a “hoax,” while calling Covid-19 briefings a time spent in vain.
“What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately,” the president tweeted, as he took to his favourite communication medium on Saturday evening.
What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately. They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!
The swipe at the media comes after he forwent what has become a tradition to stage daily coronavirus press conferences where he would update the nation on his administration’s response to the pandemic and then be grilled by reporters. Briefings would typically feature an array of top officials from the coronavirus task force, including VP Mike Pence, and last for over an hour.
Friday, however, marked the first time the briefing took just about 20 minutes with Trump refusing to take questions from the sparsely populated WH briefing room. The change in Trump’s modus operandi came after the media spun his off-hand and a somewhat rambling remark about finding a way to clean the body on the inside like disinfectants do on the outside as a direct call to inject disinfectants – to the president’s utter dismay, apparently.
Although Trump later sought to explain the obvious – that he had not advised Americans to inject themselves with bleach, laughing it off as a “sarcastic question” to reporters – that did not stop the media and Twittersphere from going into overdrive.
In his Twitter rant on Saturday, Trump also blasted the media for what he insisted was another piece of botched reporting, saying that contrary to widespread media claims, he has never called the pandemic a hoax.
“I never said the pandemic was a Hoax! Who would say such a thing? I said that the Do Nothing Democrats, together with their Mainstream Media partners, are the Hoax,” he tweeted.
I never said the pandemic was a Hoax! Who would say such a thing? I said that the Do Nothing Democrats, together with their Mainstream Media partners, are the Hoax. They have been called out & embarrassed on this, even admitting they were wrong, but continue to spread the lie!
In fact, Trump has indeed never called the outbreak that has so far infected over 933,000 people across the US and killed over 53,000 – a hoax. When accusing the Democratic party of “politicizing” the virus at a rally in late February, he referred to it as “their new hoax,” comparing it to the Russiagate and the “impeachment hoax.”
Democrats have tried to weaponize the pandemic from the outset, accusing the Trump administration for playing down the dangers of the virus. On Thursday, House Democrats voted across party lines to set up a new investigative panel to probe Trump’s handling of the crisis, drawing a rebuke from the GOP, which pointed that there are already several House committees with far-reaching oversight powers.
The move was lambasted by Trump, who labelled it yet another “witch hunt” in the making.
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