Amidst the Coronavirus pandemic, which has killed at least 71,000 Americans, President Donald Trump has consistently kept up with his complaints about the media. Apparently, he’s stunned that journalists want to, uh, ask him hard-hitting questions. After all, in his self-delusions, he’s one of the greatest presidents that the U.S. has ever had — and that’s not an exaggeration; it’s what he has explicitly said. After Trump whined about them in a newly published interview with the New York Post, CBS White House reporters Paula Reid and Weijia Jiang publicly smacked down the president’s belligerence and indicated their intent to keep on pushing.
Trump had whined that Paula Reid was nothing like Donna Reed, an actress who performed on The Donna Reed Show and It’s A Wonderful Life in the 1940s through 1960s. It’s incredible that the president is whining that reporters aren’t more like fictionalized portrayals of American housewives from decades ago.
After Trump’s new interview emerged, Reid posted on Twitter:
‘President Trump tells @nypost I am nothing like 50’s American archetypal mom Donna Reed. Fact-check: True’
President Trump tells @nypost I am nothing like 50's American archetypal mom Donna Reed. Fact-check: True. pic.twitter.com/sUTgWwsNX9
— Paula Reid (@PaulaReidCBS) May 5, 2020
Jiang jokingly chimed in:
‘I can confirm @PaulaReidCBS’ reporting here. But I wouldn’t describe us as “irritating”.’
I can confirm @PaulaReidCBS’ reporting here. But I wouldn’t describe us as “irritating”. https://t.co/YI5FZNg0jX
— Weijia Jiang (@weijia) May 5, 2020
Again — it’s a startling confirmation of just how flippantly that the president treats this whole endeavor that he even half-heartedly suggests that reporters should behave more like fiction stories from over fifty years ago. This is not a game. Tens of thousands of Americans are dead on Trump’s watch, and his focus is on trying to get reporters to be nicer to him.
Shortly after a spectacle at a White House press conference where Trump suggested that injecting household disinfectants should be pursued as a potential treatment strategy for the Coronavirus, Trump promptly wound down the previously daily press conferences held by the White House Coronavirus response task force. They’re no longer daily, but Trump — who remains obsessed with television ratings, even amidst the pandemic — says they’re not going away entirely.
He told the Post, referencing new White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany:
‘You know, we didn’t stop them. I mean, this is breaking, this, but we didn’t stop them. Because we’ll probably do maybe one a week, sometimes two depending on the news, but Kayleigh’s going to be able to do them. We’ll do them. We get a lot of people watching, and it’s the way that you get around fake news. In other words, I have a much bigger audience than anybody’s ever had.’
Add the claim that Trump has garnered the biggest audience for anything ever to the long list of his delusional proclamations.
Check out Twitter’s response below:
