On Monday at a press briefing at the White House, with CNN’s chyron at the bottom of the screen reading, “New one-day record with 486 deaths reported today; total dead nearing 3,000,” CNN’s Jim Acosta decided to target President Trump yet again over statements he had made, and Trump promptly put him in his place, asserting, “You could ask a normal question … instead of asking a nasty, snarky question like that, you should ask a real question.”
Acosta asked, “What do you say to Americans who are upset with you over the way you downplayed this crisis over the last several months? ‘We have it very much under control in this country.’ ‘The coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. It’s going to disappear. It’s like a miracle. It will disappear.’ 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 will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.’ What do you say to Americans who feel you got this wrong?
Trump replied:
It will go away, and I do want them to stay calm, and we are doing a great job. If you look at those individual statements, they’re all true. Stay calm. It will go away. You know it is going away and it will go away and we’ll have a great victory. And its people like you and CNN that say things like that — that’s why people just don’t want to listen to CNN any more. You could ask a normal question; the statements I made are — I want to keep the country calm.
I don’t want panic in the country; I could cause panic much better than even you; I could make you look like a minor-league player. But you know, I don’t want to do that. I want to have our country be calm and strong and fight and win. And it will go away. And it is incredible the job that all of these people are doing, putting them all together, the job that they are doing. I am very proud of the job that they’re doing, that Mike Pence is doing, that the task force has done, that Honeywell and Procter & Gamble and Mike and all of these people have done. I’m very proud; it’s almost a miracle, and it is, the way it’s all come together, and instead of asking a nasty, snarky question like that, you should ask a real question, and other than that I’m gonna go to somebody else.
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