President Trump
Donald John Trump Kanye West says Harriet Tubman “never freed slaves” at rally Trump-Afghanistan deal passes key period, but evasive Republican peacekeepers in worst-hit states separated by COVID response -19 MORE He said Monday that he will resume regular coronavirus briefings this week, reviving a practice that is controversial among some attendees as infections in the United States increase.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he would deliver a briefing at 5 p.m. Tuesday. It would be his first time participating in a coronavirus briefing since the end of April.
Trump noted that the briefings would focus largely on the development of a vaccine and drugs to treat the virus, which has made significant progress since the last time he held regular sessions on the pandemic. He told reporters that he could invite the heads of companies involved in vaccine development to speak to the press.
“I think it is a great way to get information out to the public about where we are with the vaccine, the therapy, and where we are in general,” Trump said. “So I think we’ll start that, probably starting tomorrow.”
The president gave daily reports from the White House through March and April, and provided updates on the administration’s response to the pandemic. But the question-and-answer sessions regularly became the Trump governors who criticized, arguing with the press and making inaccurate statements that weaken the overall messages from the federal government.
The appearances ended abruptly in late April after Trump sparked a widespread reaction by suggesting to scientists that they study whether the injection of light or disinfectants into the body could be used as a cure for the virus.
However, some advisers have lobbied in recent weeks to get the briefings back, as their number of polls sinks and the outbreak worsens. They argued that the briefings would allow Trump to show the public that he is taking a leading role in the response to the virus, even as he continues to insist that it will eventually “go away.”
Vice President Pence and members of the White House coronavirus task force have provided information several times in the past month, coinciding with a sharp increase in cases in many parts of the country.
The United States has 3.7 confirmed cases of coronavirus, and more than 140,000 Americans have died from the virus. Arizona, Texas, California and Florida have seen significant increases in infections, and Pence acknowledged Monday that the increase in cases in the solar belt was “severe.”
But Trump, who is obsessed with media coverage, hinted that he was motivated to lead the briefings once again, in part because of the attention they drew in the early days of the pandemic.
“We had very successful briefings. I was doing them and there were a lot of people watching. Record numbers watching,” he said. “In the history of cable television, television, there has never been anything like this.”
The president enjoyed an initial boost in his poll numbers in the first weeks of the pandemic when voters gathered around him. But the hit was short-lived, and he has seen his approval numbers for his COVID-19 handling in the past three months in particular.
An ABC News / Washington Post poll released on Friday showed that 38 percent of respondents approved of Trump’s response to the pandemic, compared with 46 percent in late May and 51 percent in late March, when there were relatively few confirmed cases in the country.
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