US President Donald Trump threw accusations against media and news organizations during the daily White House COVID-19 news conference in what has been described by CNN’s Jim Acosta as “the biggest meltdown from a US president” they had ever seen.
During Monday’s press conference, Mr Trump played a video produced by White House staff which included a montage of selected clips of state governors praising him for his handling of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The President used the press conference to highlight what he’d done ‘right’ amid the pandemic, saying “We’ve done this right, we’ve really done this right, the problem is the press doesn’t cover it”.
There are over 587,000 confirmed cases of the Coronavirus in the United States, and over 23,000 people have died in the US after contracting the virus.
Multiple news networks cut away from the press conference as it was happening, claiming that the President was wrongly using the session to campaign rather than provide updates on the virus pandemic. CNN used graphics to accompany the news conference, accusing the President of using the briefing as “a propaganda session” and trying to “rewrite history”.
One reporter asked the President what he had done to stop the spread of the virus during February, only for Mr Trump to respond by saying “You’re a fake, you know you’re a fake,” adding “You’re disgraceful, you’re so disgraceful.”
The President also claimed that he has ‘the ultimate authority’ to force states to lift their shutdown orders, clashing with the Constitution.
Photo Credit: Official White House Photo by D. Myles Cullen (Public Domain)
