With the United States setting new records in terms of new daily coronavirus cases, President Donald Trump plans to restart his coronavirus press briefings.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday morning, Trump said he views the briefings as an effective vehicle for disseminating information about the coronavirus and that he plans to start holding them again as early as Tuesday.
“I was doing them and we had a lot of people watching, record numbers watching in the history of cable television, and there’s never been anything like it,” Trump said, according to the White House pool report.
“It’s a great way to get information out to the public as to where we are with the vaccines and the therapeutics … So I think we’ll start that probably starting tomorrow, I’ll do it at 5 o’clock like we were doing — we had a good slot. A lot of people were watching.”
Pres. Trump announces that coronavirus task force briefings will reconvene and says that some of the "great companies" working on the COVID-19 vaccine will join the briefings. https://t.co/CCUFwnBPJ0 pic.twitter.com/2EhJBoq9KE
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) July 20, 2020
Earlier in the outbreak, Trump held near-daily coronavirus press briefings to update the public on the pandemic.
However, several networks began to stop covering the press briefings live as Trump began to take a more central role. He was also criticized for sharing false information about the outbreak during the briefings.
By late April, Trump was openly questioning the “purpose” of the briefings.
“What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, [and] then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately,” he pondered in a tweet.
And for several weeks, there were no coronavirus press briefings.
However, as 41 states are now reporting an increase in coronavirus cases, some are suggesting that the president should restart the briefings so that public health experts can disseminate important information.
