Thread by @atrupar

"First I want to thank you, for your decisive leadership ... I also want to thank you for coming here today ... I think that's the most important thing I want to say" --CDC Director Redfield slathers Dear Leader-style praise on Trump during his tour of CDC headquarters

I regret to inform you that CDC Director Redfield is a Trump sycophant

CDC officials are unable to explain why they didn't just use the WHO's coronavirus test instead of trying to develop their own, which ended up being a failed effort that got in the way of efforts to promptly test more Americans

Trump is still pushing his bonkers argument that coronavirus isn't that bad because lots of people die from the flu. He then pivots to a plug for Fox News and the ratings his town hall got last night.

"Who are you from by the way? I don't watch CNN. That's why I don't recognize you. I don't watch CNN because CNN is fake news" -- Trump insults a CNN reporter

"The [coronavirus] tests are all perfect. Like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. This was not a perfect as that, but pretty good." -- is Trump referring to the transcript of his phone call with the Ukrainian president here?

"I like the numbers being where they are. I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship" -- Trump explains that he doesn't want to let people off the Grand Princess cruise ship because he doesn't want the number of coronavirus cases in the country to go up

Trump defends gutting the federal government's pandemic preparedness over his first 3 years in office: "I just think this is something that you can never really think is going to happen."

Here's Trump rambling at length about how smart he is and how well he understands public health

Trump smears Jay Inslee, governor of the state at the heart of the coronavirus outbreak: "I told Mike [Pence] not to be complimentary of the governor, because that governor is a snake."