Donald Trump vowed Monday to bring back his widely-viewed coronavirus briefings, but said they will be limited to one or two a week instead of the daily briefings he held over the last two months.
‘We set every record with those press conferences,’ Trump boasted to the New York Post. ‘Six million people all the time. You know we had tremendous numbers, literally, it was in Bret Baier’s slot, and we did like 30 in a row.’
‘I heard, is this true? It was the highest rated hour in cable television history. That’s what I heard. I don’t know if that’s true,’ the president continued in the Oval Office interview Monday.
He also said that the spotlight would be shared, adding that some of the briefings would be led by new White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany – who held her first ever press briefing last week.
‘You know, we didn’t stop them. I mean, this is breaking, this, but we didn’t stop them,’ he said of the former daily briefings. ‘Because we’ll probably do maybe one a week, sometimes two depending on the news, but Kayleigh’s going to be able to do them.’
He said speaking directly to the press is the only way he is able to ‘get around fake news.’
‘In other words, I have a much bigger audience than anybody’s ever had,’ he lauded.
Trump credited the engaging content and high viewership of his coronavirus briefings – which a New York Times report revealed rivals The Bachelor finale and Monday Night Football ratings – to his frequent clashes with reporters in the James S. Brady Briefing Room.
Donald Trump said his coronavirus press briefings would continued, but be limited to one or two per week, and he attributed his high ratings to his frequent clashes with reporters
Trump told the New York Post that he would share the spotlight, and that White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany would hold some of the briefings in his stead
Trump said briefings would be ‘boring’ without confrontations with the press. He specifically called out CBS News reporters Weijia Jiang (left) and Paula Reid (right), who he has butted heads with during briefings, at one point telling Jiang to ‘just relax’
The president often butts heads with reporters in the James S. Brady Briefing Room, especially engaging in a back-and-forth when challenged on his COVID-19 mitigation response.
He said if he let up on this, the briefings would be ‘boring.’
He specifically called out CBS News reporters Weijia Jiang and Paula Reid during his interview, claiming the two journalists particularly irritate him during the briefings.
‘It wasn’t Donna Reed, I can tell you that,’ Trump said, referring back to the star best known for playing Mary Bailey in the 1946 Christmas hit ‘It’s A Wonderful Life.’
‘Paula Reid, she’s sitting there and I say, ‘How angry. I mean, What’s the purpose?’ They’re not even tough questions, but you see the attitude of these people, it’s like incredible,’ the president said.
‘So you know, I enjoyed it,’ he added of the confrontations.
One noteworthy exchange between Trump and Jiang occurred April 20, where the president told her to ‘keep your voice down’ as she pushed him to explain what he did to warn the American people in February that the coronavirus was spreading like a ‘wildfire.’
‘Many Americans are saying the exact same thing about you, that you should have warned them the virus was spreading like wildfire through the month of February, instead of holding rallies with thousands of people,’ Jiang said. ‘Why did you wait so long to warn them?’
Trump interrupted Jiang to ask her ‘who are you with?’
‘Nice and easy. Nice and easy, just relax,’ Trump said to Jiang when she attempted to clarify the conditions of the Chinese travel ban.
The president told the Post that ‘everybody’ likes watching him spar with reporters.
‘I was told that some people didn’t like the combative attitude so much. And I can a little bit understand that,’ he said, referencing his advisers’ claims that senior citizens were turned off by the exchanges. ‘But I would say from the standpoint of watching it and wanting to watch, that would be more interesting than having boring questions asked.’
‘And you know, at the same time, they shouldn’t be asking the same question every press conference just trying to get a rise, you know,’ Trump added in his criticism of the media.
The president suggested that he is OK with a camera facing the media to show the clashes more clearly, claiming ‘it wouldn’t be as good a viewing’ if reporters were more respectful and less combative.
‘A lot of people love when the press hits me, you know, when I go at it with the press — they like it,’ Trump insisted.
Trump stopped holding the daily press briefings last week, hosting a few outside in the Rose Garden, when the weather permitted
The president is decreasing the coronavirus briefings as the death toll nears 70,000 in the U.S., and the White House shifts focus to reopening the economy from controlling the spread of the virus
He also admitted that he enjoys it: ‘Yeah, I do I, I’m OK with it.’
‘I’d rather have a normal, you know, normal — a more normal situation, but I do,’ he conceded. ‘And they like it. Some people don’t like it. I have a feeling everybody likes it because, you know, it’s more exciting than sitting there falling asleep.’
Trump also particularly enjoys hosting the briefings as he was forced to suspend his typical campaigning style of holding massive rallies all over the country in the midst of stay-at-home and lockdown orders.
He said that if he has to cancel all his rallies ahead of the November elections, it would put him at a ‘big disadvantage.’
‘I hope we’re going to be able to get the rallies back before the election,’ Trump said. ‘I actually think it’s very important. I think that would be a big — a big disadvantage to me if we didn’t, if we couldn’t have the rallies back.’
‘People are wanting the rallies. They want to have them so badly. They were informative but they were fun,’ he mused, adding that he enjoys both rallies and briefings, and thinks they are both effective.
As of Tuesday morning, nearly 70,000 Americans died from coronavirus and there are more than 1.2 million confirmed cases.