Trump rips media, says ‘I work from early in the morning until late at night’

President Trump ripped into the media Sunday in response to a report about his work schedule, saying that he toils from morning until night in a series of tweets.

“The people that know me and know the history of our Country say that I am the hardest working President in history. I don’t know about that, but I am a hard worker and have probably gotten more done in the first 3 1/2 years than any President in history. The Fake News hates it!” the president said in the first of a string of Twitter messages.

“I work from early in the morning until late at night, haven’t left the White House in many months (except to launch Hospital Ship Comfort) in order to take care of Trade Deals, Military Rebuilding etc., and then I read a phony story in the failing @nytimes about my work schedule and eating habits, written by a third rate reporter who knows nothing about me,” he continued.

“I will often be in the Oval Office late into the night & read & see that I am angrily eating a hamburger & Diet Coke in my bedroom. People with me are always stunned. Anything to demean!” Trump said.

His ire appeared to be directed at a New York Times report published last Thursday that claimed the president has been isolated in the White House during the coronavirus pandemic and described him as a “sour president.”

Trump on Sunday also blasted “‘reporters’ who have received Noble Prizes for their work on Russia, Russia, Russia, only to have been proven totally wrong (and, in fact, it was the other side who committed the crimes),” possibly referring to the Pulitzer awards.

“I can give the Committee a very comprehensive list. When will the Noble Committee DEMAND the Prizes back, especially since they were gotten under fraud? The reporters and Lamestream Media knew the truth all along,” he said.

“Lawsuits should be brought against all, including the Fake News Organizations, to rectify this terrible injustice. For all of the great lawyers out there, do we have any takers? When will the Noble Committee Act? Better be fast!”

[New York Post]

Trump melts down demanding reporters return ‘Noble’ prizes he says they won for investigating him

President Donald Trump claimed on Sunday that members of the news media are getting “Noble Prizes” for investigating his administration.

The president made the assertion in an afternoon rant on Twitter.

Commenters quickly pointed out that Trump not only spelled “Nobel” incorrectly, but he also was mostly likely referring to Pulitzer Prizes that were awarded to reporters at The New York Times and Washington Post for their investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

[Raw Story]

White House Tried To Move CNN Reporter To Back Of Briefing Room Before Trump Walked Out

President Donald Trump is not a fan of CNN.

He clashes almost daily with reporters from the liberal cable network, and he once had a White House pass pulled from a reporter, Jim Acosta.

Trump got into another battle with the network last week — and lost.

A White House official on Friday ordered a CNN reporter to swap her front-row seat with another reporter at the back of the briefing just before Trump appeared for his daily press conference with the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

The reporter, CNN White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins, refused to swap seats, as did the other reporter. The official then said the Secret Service would get involved.

The seating chart in the briefing room is set by the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), currently headed up by ABC’s Jonathan Karl, another reporter Trump doesn’t like.

Chris Johnson, a reporter with the Washington Blade, sent out a print pool report to other reporters detailing what happened.

“Earlier today before the briefing, a White House official instructed the print pooler to take CNN’s seat in the briefing room because the seating would be swapped for the briefing. Given the seating assignment is under the jurisdiction of the White House Correspondents’ Association, not the White House, pooler refused to move. The White House official then informed the print pooler swapping wasn’t an option and the Secret Service was involved. Again, pooler refused to move, citing guidance from the WHCA. The briefing proceeded with both CNN and print pooler sitting in their respective assigned seats,” Johnson wrote.

Friday’s briefing marked the first time Trump had held the briefing and then left without taking questions.

Other reporters applauded the pair for fighting back.

“We just got word the briefing will begin in one minute. Reporters were not moved. Shout out to @chrisjohnson82 @kaitlancollins and the @whca for standing their ground,” wrote Hunter Walker, White House correspondent with Yahoo News.

Trump had clashed with Collins just the day before. In his briefing Thursday, Trump dismissed a question from a reporter about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s health, saying it arose from an “incorrect” report from CNN. Collins tried to ask a follow-up question, but Trump interrupted her.

“No, that’s enough,” he said. “The problem is, you don’t write the truth.” Collins tried to ask again, but Trump said, “No, not CNN. I told you, CNN is fake news. Don’t talk to me.”

Acosta’s press pass was revoked in November 2018 after a press conference held by Trump. The White House rebuked Acosta for “placing his hands on a young woman” after he refused to give up the microphone, pushing a White House intern’s hand away as she tried to take back the microphone.

“As a result of today’s incident, the White House is suspending the hard pass of the reporter involved until further notice,” Press Secretary Sarah Sanders wrote on Twitter, adding a video when she said, “We stand by our decision.”

Acosta sued and got his pass back.

[Daily Wire]

Trump Berates CBS News’ Weijia Jiang for Calling Whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright Gifted

President Donald Trump insisted he didn’t know anything about whistleblowing vaccine expert Dr. Rick Bright, but then berated CBS News White House correspondent Weijia Jiang for asking about Bright’s “gifts” in his field of expertise.

On Wednesday, Dr. Bright released a blockbuster statement in which he said he’d been demoted from his position leading the agency tasked with vaccine development because he had pushed back against funding unproven coronavirus treatments that Trump has relentlessly promoted — and suggested that political connections and cronyism were behind Trump’s promotion of them.

Despite the implications of Bright’s accusations, it wasn’t until nearly an hour into the briefing that a reporter asked about it.

“Mr. President, I wanted to ask you about Rick Bright,” ABC News’ Jonathan Karl said. “He’s the head of the federal agency in charge of getting a vaccine out to — to Americans once it’s ready. He says he has been pushed out of his job because he raised questions about hydroxychloroquine and some of your directives on that. Was he pushed out of that job?”

“I’ve never heard of him. You just mentioned the name. I never heard of him,” Trump claimed, then asked “When did this happen?”

“This happened today,” Karl said, to which Trump said “Well, I’ve never heard of him. If the guy says he was pushed out of a job, maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. I — you’d have to hear the other side. I don’t know who he is.”

Karl tried to ask a follow-up, but Trump brushed him off to call on another reporter.

Despite the fact that Trump simultaneously claimed not to know the head of the agency tasked with finding a vaccine during a global pandemic and casually acknowledged the man may well have been pushed out of his job, only one other reporter asked about Dr. Bright for the remainder of the briefing.

“Mr. President, yes, I just had a follow — a question for Dr. Fauci, if you don’t mind,” Weijia Jiang said, adding “And I’m happy to ask you one after.”

She never got the chance to question Trump, but Jiang asked Dr. Fauci “So this concern or an accusation he’s raised that he was removed from his job because he protested widespread use of hydroxychloroquine, are you familiar with the situation? And do you feel like public health experts feel they are able to speak publicly or to speak out in opposition to the things?”

Fauci shook his head and said “Here I am,” indicating that he is an example of an expert speaking publicly. Dr. Fauci has urged caution about the drugs Trump has promoted, but has not spoken in opposition the way Dr. Bright did.

“So you don’t feel like there’s any concern among people at the NIH right now or in the public health community?” Jiang asked.

“At the NIH, absolutely not,” Fauci replied.

“Dr. Fauci, knowing Dr. Bright and knowing what his gifts are as one of the country’s leading experts on vaccines, are those gifts best suited at NIH rather than BARDA? What’s he going to be doing with you?” Jiang asked, and added “are his gifts best suited to work with you rather than BARDA?”

“I don’t really think I can comment on somebody’s relative gifts,” Fauci said, then described Dr. Bright’s new duties.

“I mean, he’s — he’s going to be at the NIH, and he’s going to be responsible, from what I hear — again, this is what I’ve heard — that he’s going to be responsible for the development of diagnostics, which is very, very important,” Fauci said.

As Fauci wrapped up his answer, Jiang began to ask “Are you concerned at all that he –”

But Trump stepped up to the podium and interrupted by saying “And why did you say that he has great gifts or gifts? What, do you know him?”

“Well, that’s his expertise. I mean, I’m just looking at his résumé,” Jiang said. Dr. Bright is an award-winning vaccine expert.

Trump  interrupted “No, no, but have you reviewed him? Have you — have you studied him? Have you reported on him? You said, ‘his gifts.’ His gifts. I mean…”

“He’s worked his entire career developing vaccines, including the –” Jiang said, as Trump interrupted again.

“Well, that doesn’t mean you have gifts. I know a lot of people, they play baseball, but they can’t hit 150 in the Major Leagues,” Trump said.

“Well, he helped develop the flu vaccine last year,” Jiang said.

“No, no, but you talk about his great gifts,” Trump said, then rolled on to the next reporter.

Neither Jiang nor Karl had the chance to ask Trump about the substance of Dr. Bright’s accusations, and not a single other reporter bothered to try.

[Mediaite]

Trump Says the Press Is ‘Fomenting Tremendous Anger’ at Briefing: I Get Very ‘Hostile’ Questions

President Donald Trump took a moment during Monday’s coronavirus press briefing to go off on the media again and the “hostile” questions he gets.

After a question from OANN about bipartisanship and his relationship with Democrats, the president said there has been bipartisanship in addressing the economic concerns of the coronavirus pandemic.

He swiped at Speaker Nancy Pelosi a bit and said she’s been “very nasty” and “wasted a lot of time on the impeachment hoax.”

The president also took some shots at the press and complained about getting “hostile” questions:

“The people are really coming together. I think you’re going to find that our country is much more unified. I do think that the press, the media, foments a lot of this, a lot of anger. I really believe it, foments tremendous anger. For instance, I’ll be asked a tremendously hostile question from somebody and then I’ll answer in a hostile way which is appropriate. Otherwise you look foolish. Otherwise it looks like just walk off the stage and bow your head. I can’t do that. You know, I just can’t do that. But a lot of these questions are asked from certain networks are so hostile and there’s no reason for it. There’s no reason for it.”

[Mediaite]

‘You don’t have the brains you were born with’: Defensive Trump goes off on CNN reporter

President Donald Trump unleashed on CNN as a reporter was asking why he comes out to talk about being praised by governors when people are dying.

“You’re CNN. You’re fake news!” Trump shouted. “You don’t have the brains you were born with.”

He went on to attack the reporter again later in the press conference when he asked additional questions about whether Trump was duped by the Chinese. Trump said that he wasn’t, it was former President Barack Obama that was duped by China.

He then went off on how the Obama administration left him high and dry on tests for the coronavirus. COVID-19 is named “19” because it was discovered in 2019. Obama was out of office on Jan. 20, 2017.

[Raw Story]

Trump lashes out at CBS reporter asking tough questions

President Donald Trump appeared to play it cool at first when he was pressed by CBS News reporter Weijia Jiang on Sunday, asking about the slow response to the coronavirus crisis.

“If you look at what I did banning china from coming in,” Trump began.

“Not American nationals,” she cut in, to mention the 40,000 people who were allowed back into the U.S. from China.

“Nice and easy. Nice and easy. Relax. We cut it off. Everybody was amazed that I did it. We had 21 people in a room. Everybody was against it but me. Dr. Fauci said had I not done that, perhaps tens of thousands and maybe much more than that people would have died. I was very early, very, very early. And we just saw, you saw Bret Baier making a statement. They had a debate well into February and not even mention — it wasn’t mentioned, the Democrats, we were very early. I’m the president, and you know what I just did?”

He then asked her how many people had died by the time Trump had intervened. In fact, no one knows how many people with COVID-19 died or were even infected because there was no testing.

“So do you acknowledge –” she began again before he snapped at her again.

“Keep your voice down!” Trump shouted.

[Raw Story]

Media

Trump Blows Up at CNN Reporter Grilling Him for Self-Praise After More Than 40,000 Coronavirus Deaths: ‘You People are So Pathetic!’

President Donald Trump repeatedly stormed at CNN reporter Jeremy Diamond for questioning his self-praise while the coronavirus continues to ravage the country.

During his latest press conference at the White House, Trump read praise of himself from the Wall Street Journal and played two clips of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo offering positive comments about the federal response. These clips were cherry-picked, however, for Trump declined to roll any footage of Cuomo calling for greater federal action on the crisis, nor the governor’s requests for more health resources.

When Diamond got to ask his question, he started off by noting that the U.S. has now exceeded 40,000 deaths from the virus. To that point, Diamond asked Trump “can you explain why you come out here and you are reading clips and showing clips of praise for you and your administration? Is this really the time for self-congratulations?”

Trump claimed to have been directing praise to the health workers on the front lines of treating the pandemic, but Diamond noted that “the clip you played and what your read earlier was praising you.”

As Diamond once again brought up the 40,000 dead Americans, Trump switched gears to call the reporter “fake news” and said “they were excoriated by people like you who don’t know any better because you don’t have the brains with you were born with.”

“It’s not about me. Nothing is about me,” Trump grumbled.

“You are never going to treat me fairly, many of you, and I understand that. I don’t know, I got here with the worst more unfair press treatment in the history of the United States for president. They did say Abraham Lincoln had very bad treatment too.”

As Trump continued to wax on about he’s “remaking the playbook,” there was a moment when he said there were “almost 40,000” deaths, which prompted Diamond to note that it’s over 40,000.

“Oh, more than. Okay. Good. Correct me,” Trump said in sarcastic bitterness. After touting that the body count could’ve been worse, he bashed Diamond again by saying “you just don’t have the sense to understand what’s going on.”

Later in the press conference, Diamond drew Trump’s ire again when he brought up the president’s past praise for China’s coronavirus response and asked “were you duped by President Xi?” Trump deflected by responding “you and the Obama Administration” were the duped ones, and then he digressed into his trade dealings with China.

After Trump steamrolled over Diamond’s follow-up questions and claimed “nobody was tougher before the deal ever on China than Trump,” he said “you people are so pathetic at CNN” and then shifted into attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

As Trump moved on despite Diamond’s efforts, he ended it with “your ratings are so bad because you are pathetic. Your ratings are terrible. You have got to get back to real news.”

[Mediaite]

Trump says Fox, Chris Wallace ‘on a bad path’ after Pelosi appearance on network

President Trump criticized Fox News and host Chris Wallace on Sunday, saying they are “on a bad path” after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) appeared on “Fox News Sunday” for the first time since 2017.

The president in a tweet also called the Speaker “an inherently ‘dumb’ person.”

“She wasted all of her time on the Impeachment Hoax,” he tweeted, referring to Pelosi.

“She will be overthrown, either by inside or out, just like her last time as ‘Speaker,’” he added. “Wallace & @FoxNews are on a bad path, watch!” 

Fox announced last week that Pelosi would appear on its Sunday morning political talk show to “discuss the current state of the U.S. amid the coronavirus pandemic, negotiations to revive the small business loan program and much more.”

During her “Fox News Sunday” appearance, the Speaker said Trump “gets an F” on coronavirus testing. She also said National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci’s testing recommendation “hasn’t been done.”

Trump has defended his administration’s testing efforts, saying during a briefing on Saturday that U.S. capacity is “fully sufficient” to begin reopening the economy. He tweeted Sunday that he was “right on testing” just like he was “right on Ventilators.”

Pelosi also was interviewed on ABC’s “This Week,” where she said, “Frankly, I don’t pay that much attention to the president’s tweets against me.” 

[The Hill]

Fauci acknowledged a delay in the US coronavirus response. Trump then retweeted a call to fire him.

President Donald Trump retweeted a call to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci Sunday evening, raising concerns about the job security of the public health expert, while once again highlighting the precarious role of experts and the overall uncertainty that has plagued the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The retweet came following a spate of television appearances by Fauci — who is head of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force — including a Sunday morning CNN interview in which the doctor said earlier action could have limited Covid-19-related deaths in the US.

A conservative former California congressional nominee who has been a sharp Fauci critic on Twitter, DeAnna Lorraine, responded to the interview by tweeting, “Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could’ve saved more lives. Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large. Time to #FireFauci…”

Trump had refrained from publicly criticizing Fauci, but Sunday, he retweeted Lorraine and added some of his own commentary.

While the president did not engage with the call to fire the official, he did once again push the unsubstantiated claim that he acted early and decisively to curb the spread of the virus.

Trump didn’t seem to appreciate Fauci pointing out the obvious

Fauci himself suggested more could have been done by the administration Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, when host Jake Tapper asked him what might have happened if the federal government promoted social distancing in February rather than in March, when the White House rolled out its “15 Days to Slow the Spread” guidelines.

“It’s — it’s very difficult to go back and say that. I mean, obviously, you could logically say, that if you had a process that was ongoing, and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives,” Fauci said, adding, “But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.”

Fauci did not elaborate on what that pushback was, and who it came from, but did say earlier in the interview when asked about the administration listening to expert advice, “We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes, it’s not.”

But we do know from reports — including an investigation published Saturday by the New York Times — that much of the pushback came from Trump himself.

Experts warned of what was to come, but Trump did not take decisive action

Among other things, the Times report details how Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and one of the few federal voices warning the public of the threat the coronavirus posed in February, was sidelined due to these warnings. It also documents how Trump’s anger over her messaging both led to a leadership vacuum at a moment when there was no time to waste, as well as the cancellation of an important presidential briefing on mitigation strategies scheduled for February 26:

On the 18-hour plane ride home [from a state visit to India], Mr. Trump fumed as he watched the stock market crash after Dr. Messonnier’s comments. Furious, he called Mr. Azar when he landed at around 6 a.m. on Feb. 26, raging that Dr. Messonnier had scared people unnecessarily. Already on thin ice with the president over a variety of issues and having overseen the failure to quickly produce an effective and widely available test, Mr. Azar would soon find his authority reduced.

The meeting that evening with Mr. Trump to advocate social distancing was canceled, replaced by a news conference in which the president announced that the White House response would be put under the command of Vice President Mike Pence.

Pence reportedly put a moratorium on messaging like Messonnier’s — which may explain Lorraine’s assertion that Fauci claimed everything was fine in late February. Fauci did in fact tell the public not to worry in February, but tempered that message by saying Americans needed to be prepared for a rapidly changing situation.

On February 29’s NBC’s Today, for instance, Fauci said: “At this moment, there is no need to change anything you’re doing on a day-by-day basis, right now the risk is still low, but this could change. … When you start to see community spread, this could change, and force you to become much more attentive to doing things that would protect you from spread.”

According to the Times’ report, Fauci and other public health experts on the coronavirus task force were more than convinced that not only “could” things change, but that they would — particularly after a February 21 meeting at which pandemic simulations were run, leading those present to believe “they would soon need to move toward aggressive social distancing, even at the risk of severe disruption to the nation’s economy and the daily lives of millions of Americans.”

Getting Trump to reach the same conclusion became a weeks-long struggle, and it wasn’t just the advice of his public health experts the president reportedly shrugged off.

White House trade adviser and Trump confidant Peter Navarro wrote memos in late February warning of the looming coronavirus crisis in America. Trump told reporters last week, “I didn’t see ’em, I didn’t look for ’em either.” The National Security Council recommended shutting down large cities based on intelligence it gathered in January. As Vox’s Aja Romano writes, “The security experts went dismissed even as an unfounded conspiracy theory about the virus’s origin spread among some government officials and economic advisers pushed back against taking drastic measures to thwart China.”

Although the president was eventually brought onboard with mitigation efforts beyond border closures in March, the administration’s refusal to heed the advice of experts bearing dire warnings led to well-documented delays in scaling up testing, acquiring needed equipment, and offering consistent federal messaging on what was needed to limit the spread of the virus.

But the response remains a fractured one, sometimes plagued by infighting and frustration over who has taken on what. And as the president considers when to encourage Americans to resume normal life, it is still uncertain how much weight Trump is giving expert advice. When asked Saturday on Fox News what will influence his decision-making on extending social distancing guidance past April 30, the president said, “a lot of facts and a lot of instincts.”

Is Trump going to fire Fauci?

In this context, what Trump’s retweet means — if anything — is unclear. On one hand, he has a history of communicating displeasure with members of his administration on Twitter before firing them, tweeting once, for example about his dissatisfaction with former Inspector General Michael Atkinson four months before suddenly firing him. On the other hand, Trump has been effusive with his praise of Fauci, calling him “extraordinary” and a “good man.”

Friday, Trump told reporters, “I have great respect for this group. In fact, I told Tony Fauci — I said, ‘Why don’t you move to New York, run against AOC? You will win easily.’ But he decided that he’s not going to do that, okay? I kid.”

Given the president’s unpredictability, any number of explanations for the tweet are possible, from Trump blowing off steam at a moment of frustration over the CNN interview to him retweeting before having read the whole of Lorraine’s post. But as Fauci is, like Trump noted, widely popular — a Quinnipiac University poll released April 8 found 78 percent of Americans believe the doctor is handling the pandemic well, compared to the 46 percent who said the same of Trump — firing him seems inadvisable. Such a move would not only strip the US of a valuable expert at a time when such voices are badly needed, but would likely lead to widespread anger of the sort the president got a taste of Monday, as #FireTrump trended in response to his tweet.

[Vox]

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