13 hours of Trump: The president fills briefings with attacks and boasts, but little empathy
President Donald Trump strode to the lectern in the White House briefing room Thursday and, for just over an hour, attacked his rivals, dismissing Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as a "sleepy guy in a basement of a house" and lambasting the media as "fake news" and "lamestream."
He showered praise on himself and his team, repeatedly touting the "great job" they were doing as he spoke of the "tremendous progress" being made toward a vaccine and how "phenomenally" the nation was faring in terms of mortality.
What he did not do was offer any sympathy for the 2,081 Americans who were reported dead from the coronavirus on that day alone - among nearly 53,000 Americans who have perished since the pandemic began.
What began as daily briefings meant to convey public health information have become de facto political rallies conducted from the West Wing of the White House. Trump offers little in the way of accurate medical information or empathy for coronavirus victims, instead focusing on attacking his enemies and lauding himself and his allies.
The president has spoken for more than 28 hours in the 35 briefings held since March 16, eating up 60 percent of the time that officials spoke, according to a Washington Post analysis of annotated transcripts from Factba.se, a data analytics company.
Over the past three weeks, the tally comes to more than 13 hours of Trump - including two hours spent on attacks and 45 minutes praising himself and his administration, but just 4 1/2 minutes expressing condolences for coronavirus victims. He spent twice as much time promoting an unproven antimalarial drug that was the object of a Food and Drug Administration warning Friday. Trump also said something false or misleading in nearly a quarter of his prepared comments or answers to questions, the analysis shows.
Trump's freewheeling approach ended in a political crisis this past week, after the president's dangerous suggestion at a briefing Thursday that injecting bleach or other disinfectants might cure the coronavirus - "almost as a cleaning." The remarks set off a government-wide scramble and led to Trump telling aides Friday he would skip briefings this weekend. White House officials say privately they are considering scaling back the events entirely.
"What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately," Trump complained in a tweet Saturday. "They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!"
The briefings have come to replace Trump's "Keep America Great" campaign rallies - now on pause during the global contagion - and fulfill the president's needs and impulses in the way his arena-shaking campaign events once did: a chance for him to riff, free-associate, spar with the media and occupy center stage.
The Post analysis of Trump's daily coronavirus briefings over the past three weeks - from Monday, April 6 to Friday, April 24 - reveals a president using the White House lectern to vent and rage; to dispense dubious and even dangerous medical advice; and to lavish praise upon himself and his government.
Trump has attacked someone in 113 out of 346 questions he has answered - or a third of his responses. He has offered false or misleading information in nearly 25 percent of his remarks. And he has played videos praising himself and his administration's efforts three times, including one that was widely derided as campaign propaganda produced by White House aides at taxpayer expense.
The president repeatedly returns to the same topics, frequently treating questions as cues for familiar talking points.
He has, for instance, mentioned the nation's testing capacity in 14 percent of his comments, talked about the country's ventilator supply in 12 percent and waxed on about his imposition of travel bans - particularly from China - in 9 percent.
"These press conferences are 10 minutes of information, if you're lucky, and an hour and a half of self-congratulations and misinformation," said Guy Cecil, chairman of Priorities USA, the largest Democratic super PAC, which supports Biden. "It is the distillation of a Trump rally. It is the personification of a Trump rally."
Vice President Mike Pence, who heads the administration's coronavirus task force, holds second place in speaking time at the briefings since mid-March - about 5 1/2 hours, or roughly 12 percent of the total.
The medical professionals also received significantly less airtime than Trump. Deborah Birx, who oversees the administration's virus response, spoke close to six hours, while Anthony Fauci, an infectious disease expert, spoke for just over two hours at 22 of the briefings.
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: