Donald Trump abruptly ended a lie-filled Rose Garden press conference about his disastrous coronavirus response following an exchange with female reporters, one of whom grilled him about his boasts that COVID-19 testing in the U.S. was better than anywhere in the world.
Asked Weijia Jiang of CBS: “You’ve said many times that the U.S. is doing far better than any other country when it comes to testing. Why does that matter? Why is this a global competition to you if every day Americans arte still losing their lives and we’re still seeing more cases every day?”
Replied Trump: “Well, they’re losing their lives everywhere in the world, and maybe that’s a question you should ask China. Don’t ask me. Ask China that question, OK? When you ask them that question, you may get a very unusual answer.”
“Sir, why are you saying that to me, specifically?” said Jiang, who was born in China, but raised in West Virginia, according to The Hill.
“I’m telling you,” Trump responded. “I’m not saying it specifically to anybody. I’m saying it to anybody that would ask a nasty question like that.”
Trump then pointed at CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins and when she didn’t ask her question immediately Trump quickly moved to another reporter. When Collins tried to ask her question, Trump left the garden.
Axios adds: “President Trump claimed at a press briefing Monday that any American who ‘wants’ a coronavirus test can get one — contradicting his testing coordinator Adm. Brett Giroir, who just moments earlier said that tests are mostly reserved for people who ‘need’ one because they present symptoms or are participating in contact tracing.”
At the same press conference, on the same day U.S deaths due to the coronavirus exceeded 80,000, Trump declared, “We have met the moment and we have prevailed.”
Trump was also asked about tweets he made over the weekend accusing former President Barack Obama of “the biggest political crime in American history by far.”
When asked what crime Obama had committed, Trump wouldn’t name it.
“Obamagate,” Trump declared. “It’s been going on for a long time. It’s been going on from before I even got elected. It’s a disgrace that it happened, and if you look at what’s gone on and if you look at now all of the information that is being released and, from what I understand, that’s only the beginning. Some terrible things happened, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again. You’ll be seeing what’s going on over the coming weeks.”
When pressed on it by the reporter, Philip Rucker from the Washington Post, Trump snapped: “You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours.”
