Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Trump Lets Loose Tirade Of Grievances As He Continues To Face Criticism Over His Administration's Early Response
The New York Times: Trump Turns Daily Coronavirus Briefing Into A Defense Of His Record
President Trump turned Monday’s daily coronavirus task force briefing into an aggressive defense of his own halting response to the pandemic and used a campaign-style video to denounce criticism that he moved too slowly to limit the deadly spread of the virus. For nearly an hour, Mr. Trump vented his frustration after weekend news reports that his own public health officials were prepared by late February to recommend aggressive social distancing measures, but that the president did not announce them until several weeks later — a crucial delay that allowed the virus to spread. (Shear and Karni, 4/13)
Los Angeles Times: Trump Stokes Up His Blame Game For The Coronavirus
After a weekend fuming and tweeting about what he saw as negative news coverage, Trump staged one of the strangest yet of his near-nightly White House briefings, angrily claiming he had been “brutalized” by the media and playing a White House-produced campaign-style reel of selectively edited video clips of officials effusively praising his efforts. The often-testy briefing underscored the dissonance between beleaguered state and local officials and medical authorities on the front lines of a public health catastrophe and a president in the throes of a legacy-defining crisis who continues to use a prism of unwavering self-regard, insisting that he “calls the shots” even as he scapegoated others — especially the media — for any problems or delays. (Stokols and Bierman, 4/13)
CNN: Trump Rages At Criticism While Governors Craft Their Own Plans To Reopen The Economy
During the news conference, Trump moaned that the press was not giving him credit because "everything we did was right" in the coronavirus pandemic. Raging at reporters, the President used the campaign-style video to mislead the nation about his sluggish recognition of the threat from the virus, after once predicting a "miracle" that would make it go away. He called up his top medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, to publicly repudiate his own words Sunday on CNN, which had been interpreted as criticism of early administration actions. (Collinson and Reston, 4/14)
The Wall Street Journal: Trump Isn’t Firing Fauci Over Coronavirus Comments, White House Says
President Trump isn’t firing Anthony Fauci, the White House said Monday, seeking to extinguish speculation that flared over the weekend after Mr. Trump retweeted a critic who called for the member of his administration’s coronavirus task force to be dismissed after he said lives could have been saved if the government had acted more quickly. “Today I walk in and I hear I’m going to fire him. I’m not firing—I think he’s a wonderful guy,” Mr. Trump said of Dr. Fauci at a White House news conference later Monday. (Leary and Armour, 4/13)
The Hill: Fauci Offers Support For Trump
Anthony Fauci on Monday sought to squash any notion of a fissure between himself and President Trump, saying at the opening of a coronavirus task force briefing that the president repeatedly and immediately backed social distancing recommendations from Fauci and other public health officials despite the economic pain. “The first and only time that I went in and said we should do mitigation strongly, the response was, ‘yes, we’ll do it,’” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told reporters in the White House briefing room on Monday evening. (Chalfant, 4/13)
The Washington Post: President Trump Made 18,000 False Or Misleading Claims In 1,170 Days
When we last updated our database of President Trump’s false or misleading claims, it was on Jan. 19, the end of his third year as president. The president’s most frequently repeated false claim was that he presided over the best economy in the history of the United States. The next day, the first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus was reported in the United States. So, with this update through April 3, we’ve added a new category — coronavirus — that already has more than 350 items. (Kessler, Rizzo and Kelly, 4/14)
The Wall Street Journal: Trump Funding Threat Against World Health Organization Linked To Hiring Practices
President Trump’s threat to withhold money from the World Health Organization stems from an ongoing discussion inside the administration to link the $12 billion the U.S. spends on international organizations to the number of American citizens hired by the groups, officials said. The effort has been part of a broader push to curtail China’s growing global influence but was delayed by turnover inside the White House and the State Department, according to current and former administration officials. (Bender, 4/13)
Politico: Pelosi Looks To Seize Trump’s Bully Pulpit
As President Donald Trump beams into American homes with his daily coronavirus briefings, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided the best way to counter him is to be everywhere — even if that means doing so from her San Francisco kitchen. Almost daily, Pelosi pops up on one network or another — even cycling through the late-night talk show junket — dropping in for interviews from a computer propped up on a dining room table that sits just off her West Coast kitchen. (Caygle and Ferris, 4/14)
