In a rare reflection of his administration’s 24/7 war on the coronavirus, President Trump Tuesday took a bit of blame for his bad press — and CNN immediately rewarded him for that.
At the end of his wide open and lengthy press conference today, he praised his team and efforts to quell the spread of the virus but admitted to failing in getting the media to acknowledge any of that.
“We’ve done a fantastic job. The only thing we haven’t done well is to get good press,” said the president, who earlier criticized a skewed New York Times report of one of his actions but generally pulled his punches against the media.
“We’ve done a fantastic job but it hasn’t been appreciated,” he said.
Conservative media critics say he’s exactly right. For example, his first move in closing borders to people from China, where the Wuhan virus began, was panned as “racist” in the media.
Trump referred to that when he said, “Even the closing down of the borders, which had never been done, and not only did we close them, we closed them early. The press doesn’t like writing about it.”
But rather than ranting about it, he said, “So we’ve done a poor job on press relationships. I don’t know who to blame for that. Maybe I can blame ourselves, so that I will blame ourselves, but I think we’ve done a good job. I think we’ve done a poor job in terms of press relationships.”
The result?
CNN’s Dana Bash, reviewing Trump’s calm and authoritative press conference, said it was exactly what the nation needs.
“If you look at the big picture, this was remarkable from the president of the United States. This is a nonpartisan, this is an important thing to note and to applaud from an American standpoint, from a human standpoint, he's being the kind of leader that people need, at least in tone, today, and yesterday in tone that people need and want and yearn for in times of crisis and uncertainty,” she said.
Bash added, “Big picture, the fact that the president has been convinced to be different whether it is Chris Christie was out there asking him to do it, whether it was Newt Gingrich sitting in Italy watching firsthand of what's happening or his friends at Fox News have changed their tone. Probably all the above of what's happening. But it is important to hear him strike that tone of calm and of understanding of how incredibly dire this is and the fact that he even said on the notion of people going out, somebody asked about well, what about people of all generations going out when they should not. And he said that they shouldn’t and they're actually performing self-policing. It is peer pressure, that they are telling people not to do it. That's pretty incredible from a guy who a couple of days ago was trying to downplay it and keep the economy is going.”
But Brent Bozell, founder and president of the Media Research Center, said no matter what Trump does, he will never get the media rally that other presidents in crisis mode have.
"During a time of national crisis, the American people, along with the national media, tend to rally around the president. There's no better example than 9/11 and George W. Bush. This will never be the case with the national media and President Trump. While the 'hard news' reporting has been far more serious than usual, it's also included the usual misreporting and gratuitous head slaps aimed at the president. But that's 'breaking news,'" he told Secrets.
Bozell added, "Once they get to the analytical phase, deciding winners and losers, the floodgates will open. Just as they blamed Reagan for AIDS, and Bush for Katrina, they will blame Trump for the terrible damage of the Wuhan coronavirus, both in terms of the economy and loss of life. Just watch."
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