WH Press Secretary Abruptly Announces Monday Photo-Op

0
971

Kayleigh McEnany has fit right in with the Trump-centric culture at the White House. In recent days, she even went on television to defend the claim that President Donald Trump is supposedly too busy to eat sometimes. She does know that when he spends hours on end angrily live-tweeting his thoughts about a slew of news programs, we can all see the tweets, right? This Monday, in the latest development of the ongoing White House saga of prioritizing Trump’s ego above health and safety concerns for the American public, McEnany abruptly announced that Trump would be holding a press conference after all, although earlier in the day, she’d claimed there’d be no presser.

Perhaps Trump just can’t stand being out from in front of the cameras. Early Monday afternoon, McEnany tweeted:

‘UPDATE: The White House has additional testing guidance and other announcements about safely opening up America again. President @realDonaldTrump will brief the nation during a press conference this evening.’

Earlier in the day, McEnany had shared on Fox:

‘Today, we’re not tracking a briefing. There will be a press avail later this afternoon with CEOs that the president is meeting with. There will be briefings throughout other portions of the week. But these briefings are excellent.’

It’s definitely a stretch, at best, to call the briefings “excellent.” Reporting has even circulated that after the debacle surrounding Trump’s suggestion last week at a White House press conference that officials should look into injecting household disinfectants as a Coronavirus treatment, the president was planning to pare down his Coronavirus press conferences. There were no press conferences involving the president over the weekend, and at the Friday edition, Trump left without taking any questions.

Repeatedly, those events have devolved into venues for the president to vent his frustrations with the media, and he has endlessly touted the television ratings for the press conferences rather than, you know, the actual lifesaving information that he’s supposed to be sharing.

In fact, Trump’s “empathy gap” has proven increasingly staggering. MSNBC reporter Kasie Hunt explains:

‘According to a Washington Post analysis, President Trump spent 4 1/2 minutes out 13 hours of press conferences expressing condolences and acknowledging the coronavirus death toll.’

Prior to Trump’s Monday press conference, it’s unclear what precisely he may talk about, although it’s worth noting that the entry for the event on the White House schedule changed from the Coronavirus response task force holding a press conference to the president holding a press conference. So the event was geared up to be a Trumpian spectacle from the start.

Going forward, a main next task for the U.S. is dealing with reopening the economy once Coronavirus-induced social distancing can be lifted. Trump has consistently advocated for letting the states essentially go it alone. In fact, this Monday, he even complained about having to send any support to states like Illinois at all. He claimed that taxpayers are getting left with huge bills for “bailing out poorly run states (like Illinois, as example) and cities, in all cases Democrat run and managed.” This financial concern is completely absent when it comes to Trump’s mounting golf trip costs.