Few news outlets are actually airing Donald Trump’s press briefings since he spends most of the time lying and spreading disinformation about COVID-19 and airing those lies are irresponsible. His Friday press briefing was no different.
A comatose sounding Trump claims that the US already "essentially" has a vaccine, and then repeats his new favorite lie that Joe Biden is an anti-vaxxer. pic.twitter.com/1FMbFiHvKz
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) September 18, 2020
Trump began his press briefing by reading from sheets of paper, droning on with little energy. He once again refuted the testimony of his own Center for Disease Control (CDC) director, who told Congress that a vaccine would not be fully available to the public until the third quarter of 2021. Trump once again promised Americans that there would actually be a vaccine in either October or November, with a full rollout in April 2021. His statements up until now have not mentioned a full rollout, just that a vaccine was coming before the election.
Of course, he also went into attack mode over mail-in voting, rhetoric that he’s pushed consistently throughout the campaign. Despite the fact that there is no evidence that mail-in voting leads to fraud, Trump demanded that if he loses, it will be because Democrats harvested votes and cheated him out of the presidency. It sounds like an excellent excuse for him to use should he lose, which is more than likely the motivation behind those lies.
"I think it's going to be a terrible time for this country … this is going to be the scam of all time" — Trump went on a completely unhinged, fact-free rant about mail voting, then abruptly ended the press conference pic.twitter.com/pViTaCK61x
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 18, 2020
For the full press briefing, including the moment Trump stormed off stage when he was asked if the election would still be fraudulent if he won in 2020, see video below:
Featured image screenshot via YouTube