A press conference billed as a presidential update to the country on the coronavirus, a global pandemic that has killed 170,000 Americans, turned into a makeshift campaign rally as Trump touted his record on the economy, praised himself on his handling of the virus, lied about the numbers around the virus, and warned that “Iran is dreaming of Joe Biden.”
Trump begins his August 15 Bedminster news conference by claiming US coronavirus cases are going down "despite" testing, which reveals a profound confusion about how testing works. (Also there were over 55,000 news cases yesterday, so cases are not significantly dropping.) pic.twitter.com/hu3BFFZaiZ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 15, 2020
Trump meandered through random subjects, going on for some time about football and how he misses it and wants it back. He decried a story in CNN asking whether Trump will be blamed for the lack of football in the South, which he dismissed by saying he’s called for football to come back. He didn’t seem to understand that it’s the virus he’s being blamed for.
However, football is a big priority to him, he said. “We’re trying to help the NFL, as long as they stand for our flag and our country.” The NBA, on the other hand, is not worth watching. Trump said the NBA’s ratings are down after players kneeled during the national anthem, and that what they did was “disgusting.” With a straight face, Trump taunted that the NBA, who are not playing in front of fans at the moment, are being punished with “a lot of empty seats.”
Pres Trump: @NBA’s ratings down because of their notorious act. https://t.co/XSQdImTLTs
— beenewsdaily (@BeeNewsDaily) August 15, 2020
Trump blamed Democrats for the lack of funding going to the USPS, saying “the Democrats are not approving proper funding for postal.” He then repeated his much analyzed statement from Thursday, saying “if they can’t get the money they need for universal mail-in voting, I don’t see how they can have it.” He defended his appointed postmaster general Louis Dejoy, the man who was recently exposed as owning stock in a USPS competitor and taking steps to slow down processing of the mail. Trump said that his measures are warranted since “the post office has lost billions and billions of dollars, I looked at numbers today.”
In one rare moment of truth Trump said of Dejoy “I don’t know what he’s doing…he’s gonna obviously need funding, but the Democrats aren’t willing to provide other things therefore they’re not gonna get that.”
Tonight I’ve made a criminal referral to the New Jersey Attorney General asking him to empanel a grand jury to look at subversion of NJ election laws by donald trump, louis dejoy, and other trump officials in their accelerating arson of the post office. pic.twitter.com/mxqbV8EmVn
— Bill Pascrell, Jr. (@BillPascrell) August 14, 2020
Trump also offered his daily self-own, saying that the next president should be decided by voters “when you see numbers like this on the virus and on the economy.” Let’s hope that holds true.
For the full press conference, see video below:
Featured image screenshot via YouTube
