Seat of his pants
Donald Trump is desperate for attention and adulation, and with him not doing any rallies in person anytime soon, apparently he is planning to resort to his daily coronavirus briefings starting again today.
The timing and nature of these daily briefs are intended to distract the nation from the daily local and national news (where real facts and information can be gleaned), and to give Trump the ratings and stage he craves. His intentions were clear when he announced his plans: “I was doing them and we had a lot of people watching, record numbers watching in the history of cable television. There’s never been anything like it. It’s a great way to get information out to the public as to where we are with the vaccines, with the therapeutics.”
Theoretically, that is true about being a great way to get information out. However, as we saw with Chris Wallace’s interview, the man is not capable of truth telling about the pandemic.
According to the White House, no members of the White House coronavirus task force are going to be present at the briefing.
Recall the last time that Trump held one of these, when we heard about sunlight and injecting disinfectants. And the person to whom he turned for affirmation, Dr. Deborah Birx, will supposedly not be there either.
Kayleigh McEnany attacked the New York Times on Tuesday for its story about the coronavirus and the “cheerleading” and “positive information pusher” image they painted of Birx. From all indications, when she has been on any television, she has defended Trump as studious and defended his baseless factual assertions. What we are going to start seeing today and each day of these press briefings is Trump flinging a load from his briefs.
Daniel is a lawyer writing and teaching about SCOTUS, and is the author of the book “The Chief Justices” about the SCOTUS as seen through the center seat.