Trump Unleashes A Tirade On Reporter Over Covid-19 Question
Donald Trump has thrown an extraordinary temper tantrum on live television, lambasting a reporter who challenged him for raising hopes about a coronavirus treatment.
Peter Alexander, White House correspondent at NBC News, asked the US president: “What do you say to Americans, who are watching you right now, who are scared?”
Erupting in anger, Trump unleashed a tirade: “I say that you’re a terrible reporter. That’s what I say. I think it’s a very nasty question and I think it’s a very bad signal that you’re putting out to the American people.”
The outburst came at Friday’s White House coronavirus taskforce briefing, at which Trump announced a restriction on non-essential travel across the US-Mexico border as well as stricter controls on undocumented migrants.
The president – who repeatedly downplayed the threat early in the global outbreak – has this week been hyping an anti-malarial drug, chloroquine, as a possible therapeutic treatment.
“It may work, it may not work,” he said on Friday. “I feel good about it. It’s just a feeling. I’m a smart guy … We have nothing to lose. You know the expression, ‘What the hell do you have to lose?’”
This was originally his campaign pitch to African Americans.
Yet Trump’s “feeling”, on which he so often relies, was confronted by science when Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, cautioned that evidence of chloroquine’s benefits against coronavirus is “anecdotal” and it should not be viewed as a miracle cure.
“Fundamentally, I think it probably is going to be safe, but I like to prove things first,” Fauci said.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DduAZnNJ1pU]
