President Trump sparred with CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta after he suggested the president initially downplayed the severity of the coronavirus crisis in the United States.
“Go ahead, let’s give it a shot,” Trump said while calling on Acosta to ask a question during a press briefing at the White House on Monday.
Acosta mentioned a number of statements the president has made about the virus in recent weeks before asking if he has anything to say to those who disapprove of his response to the outbreak.
“‘We have it very much under control in this country … It’s going to disappear. It’s like a miracle,'” Acosta quoted Trump as saying. “March 4: ‘We have a very small number of people in this country infected.’ March 10: ‘We’re prepared. We’re doing a great job with it. It’s going away. Just stay calm. It will go away.’ What do you say to Americans who believe that you got this wrong?”
“If you look at those individual statements, they are all true. ‘Stay calm. It will go away.’ You know, it is going away. And it will go away, and we’re going to have a great victory,'” Trump said. “It’s people like you and CNN that say things like that. It’s why people just don’t want to listen to CNN anymore.”
If he wanted to make people panic, Trump said, he could do that easily.
“I don’t want panic in the country. I could cause panic much better than even you,” he said. “I would make you look like a minor league player, but, you know what? I don’t want to do that. I want to have our country be calm.”
The president finished with a shot at Acosta, with whom he has regularly argued during press briefings.
“Instead of asking a nasty, snarky question like that, you should ask a real question,” Trump said, before turning to a different reporter and moving on with the press conference.
