Trump begins the April 17 #TrumpPressConf by remarking on Sonny Perdue's handsomeness and then announcing a new $19 billion relief program for farmers
"It's the hot one" -- Trump talks about new coronavirus tests like they're condos in Trump Tower he's trying to sell
"The governors are responsible for testing" -- Trump passes the buck
"We're the king of ventilators" -- Trump
"We started from ground zero" -- Trump tries to blame Obama for not preparing testing capabilities for a virus that didn't exist when he was president
"Requests were made far beyond what was objectively needed" -- Trump spikes the football over Democratic governors in some cases asking for more ventilators than it turns out they needed to keep people alive
"I think they have it under very good control" -- Trump talks about New York like it's a foreign country
Trump says he now expects "around 60,000, maybe 65,000" American deaths from the coronavirus. He indicates he'll proclaim any total under 100,000 as a reflection of what a great job his government did.
TRUMP: "I wish I could tell you stories what other countries, even powerful countries, say to me, the leaders. They say it quietly and off the record, but they have great respect for what we can do."
Adventures in reading with Trump
"We believe labs and hospitals are performing more than 120,000 tests per day," Pence proclaims as if it's a big accomplishment, but what he doesn't mention is that the number of per-day completed tests hasn't really increased in a month
PENCE: "As you will hear from all our experts tonight, our best scientists & health experts assess that states today have enough tests to implement the criteria of phase one, if they choose."
(That is not what experts who talked to @germanrlopez said ) vox.com/2020/4/17/2122…
Since the number of tests competed per day hasn't increased in the last month this slide basically represents the White House taking credit for the passage of time
"I worked overseas way too long" -- Dr. Birx has some trouble identifying Montana on a map
It's basically open mic night in the White House briefing room
The Trump White House takes credit for the passage of time
Trump began this briefing by saying "governors are responsible for testing" and since then administration officials have spent about an hour talking about testing 🤔
Trump on his "LIBERATE" tweets basically calling for civil unrest in a number of states with Democratic governors: "I think some things are too tough."
Asked if he's concerned about anti-stay-at-home protesters spreading Covid when they congregate together, Trump indicates he's not because "these are people expressing their views." (Pandemics don't work like that.)
"I wonder who owns that company" -- Trump suggests that owners of meat packing plants that have experienced Covid outbreaks are somehow responsible
"Who was president then? I wonder" -- Trump is still trying to pin coronavirus on Obama
Trump on federal coronavirus relief: "It is going to get us to a point that is going to be rather beautiful. We think that that will be the point, and it could be they want more, but maybe at a certain point we're gonna stop."
TRUMP: "Art Laffer, who is tremendous, in fact he recently got the Medal of Freedom, economist, he was with Reagan, he looks like he's 45 but I think he might be older than that, he looks so great. Art Laffer said the single greatest thing you can do is the payroll tax cut."
Trump on origins of the coronavirus: "They talk about a certain kind of but that bat is not in that area. If you can believe it, that is what they are down to, bats."
"How about the Obama website?" -- Trump deflects from questions about problems with coronavirus stimulus payments by doing Obama whataboutism
Trump on resuming rallies before November: "I hope we are going to have rallies. I think they are going to be bigger than ever."
He then claims ludicrously that 175,000 people (!) showed up for a recent rally in New Jersey.
Trump still hasn't figured out that the 1918 flu pandemic didn't happen in 1917
TRUMP: "We've got to open up our country, we are going to open it up in quadrants. Some of the states should get together and work on their own borders, because you don't want to have people pouring through the border of a state that is not infected."
"I think the schools are going to be reopened soon" -- Trump
Trump on the coronavirus death toll: "We don't have the most in the world deaths. The most in the world has to be China. It is a massive country ... they must have the most."
"They wanna take their guns away ... when you talk about 'liberate' or liberation, you can certainly look at Virginia as one" -- Trump is unrepentant about his tweets basically calling for civil unrest in states with democratic governors
Trump, who golfed many times in February and March and attended a party at Mar-a-Lago last month that was a coronavirus vector, says "I think I've been in the White House for months."
I challenge you to try and make sense of this Trump rant
Trump concludes the briefing with this: "This has been a situation where a lot of great people have been involved and a lot of great decisions have been made."
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