The Democratic National Committee’s 2020 war room rolled out some new ammunition in its bid to take down President Trump and belittle his fight against the coronavirus: 23 tweets from reporters critical of his Saturday virus task force briefing.
“Trump Turns Another Briefing Into A Campaign Rally” headlined the war room release, listing the tweets of prominent reporters from the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, Al Jazeera, Washington Post, Huffington Post, and others.
In their tweets and reports promoted by the party, reporters dismissed Trump’s briefing.
“No news at this briefing so far,” tweeted Maggie Haberman of the New York Times.
Saturday’s briefing brought to you by Trump’s Greatest Hits, including complaining about broken system, touting that the federal government has done everything perfectly (“We didn’t miss a trick”) and complaining about the test.
News? Not so much. #coronavirus
— Domenico Montanaro (@DomenicoNPR) April 18, 2020
“What’s newsworthy here,” wrote Josh Kraushaar of the National Journal.
“The president is, again, saying stuff,” added CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale.
NPR’s Domenico Montanaro tweeted, “Saturday’s briefing brought to you by Trump’s Greatest Hits, including complaining about broken system, touting that the federal government has done everything perfectly (‘We didn’t miss a trick’) and complaining about the test. News? Not so much.”
The president is, again, saying stuff.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) April 18, 2020
And Andrea Mitchell said on MSNBC, “We were told he was going to brief the, to brief about the current state of the coronavirus crisis, but clearly, he is on a political tear — attacking reporters, attacking the New York Times, saying that he inherited garbage when in fact he inherited a plan from the Obama administration and an office on pandemics, which he then disassembled … as well as medical health officials who were pre-positioned in China, who might have spotted the beginning of this pandemic.”
With the list of tweets from reporters, the DNC made its case that, “Instead of using tonight’s briefing to update Americans on the coronavirus, Trump turned it into a campaign rally where he attacked anyone who has pointed out his failures, downplayed the number of U.S. fatalities and lied about our testing capacity.”
Quoting reporters’ comments can lend credibility to the attack, especially among those who follow those journalists and their outlets. A Pew Research Center survey this month said that 54% approve of the media’s coverage of the virus. Some 48% gave Trump a good to excellent rating but gave public health officials often seen at the briefings a 79% good to excellent rating.
Trump’s hot and cold relationship with the media was on full display yesterday as he called out reporters and newspapers for coverage he disagreed with. “The media has been, some very honest but some very dishonest,” he said.
The DNC list of reporters’ tweets that were used in their war room attack won’t change his mind.
In fact, there were so many that the party broke them up into six different topics to rap Trump on his wide-ranging, 67-minute briefing that featured news on the virus, attacks on the media and Senate critics, cheering of protests to open the economy, and comments from his new chief of staff, as well as lead White House medical expert, Dr. Deborah Birx.
Trump now spinning the 37,938 dead Americans thus far as a victory, and a lower per-capita mortality rate compared to other countries [a dubious claim, given the per-capita testing] so it’s going to be that kind of couple of hours.
— S.V. Dáte (@svdate) April 18, 2020
One of the six, for example, is, “Trump is desperate to downplay the crisis and falsely claim success against the virus, so he deemphasized the many Americans who have lost their lives.”
Under that heading, it lists these three tweets from White House reporters:
Reuters’s Jeff Mason: “Trump opens up his press conference by saying the U.S. has fewer deaths per capita than other nations, says China is way ahead in terms of death (despite the numbers).”
This is one of Trump’s most repetitive and debunk-able talking points re: his handling of coronavirus and the testing debacle https://t.co/YZpDodwHkj
— John Haltiwanger (@jchaltiwanger) April 18, 2020
Vox’s Aaron Rupar: “The US has the most coronavirus deaths in the world, but Trump begins the April 18 #TrumpPressConf by claiming America ‘has produced better health outcomes than any other country, with the possible exception of Germany.’”
Huffington Post’s S.V. Dáte: “Trump now spinning the 37,938 dead Americans thus far as a victory, and a lower per-capita mortality rate compared to other countries [a dubious claim, given the per-capita testing] so it’s going to be that kind of couple of hours.”
