Trump in his opening remarks at coronavirus briefing: "You look at the approval ratings and they're the lowest they've ever been -- for media... Ought to get it together for a while until this is over and then go back to your fake news."
Trump: "We have to open our country again. ... This country wasn't meant for this. Few were. Few were." ... Which ones were?
Trump says there's no contingency plan for the Republican nominating convention. "We think by the end of August we'll be in good shape."
Asked about his firing of the intelligence community inspector general yesterday, Trump says: "I thought he did a terrible job. He took a whistle-blower report ...a fake report, and he brought it to Congress with an emergency. Not a big Trump fan, that I can tell you.
Trump in the White House during a global pandemic: "They give this whistle-blower status that he doesn't deserve. He's a fake whistle-blower, and frankly somebody should sue his ass off."
Trump on Navy Capt. fired for pleading for more help for his carrier: "He wrote a letter. The letter was a 5-page letter from a captain... I don't think that's appropriate. I thought it looked terrible. ... I thought it was terrible what he did. This isn't a class in literature."
Asked about a Biden tweet criticizing him, Trump says the former VP "doesn't write...He's probably not watching but if he is he doesn't understand what he's watching."
So far, from the WH briefing room, Trump has attacked the media ("fake news"), the former intel IG ("terrible job"), Capt. Crozier ("terrible what he did"), Biden ("doesn't write"), 3M ("not treated our country well").
Trump earlier read a report about potentially success of hydroxy-chloroquine and added: "It might be correct, it might be false." Now he says he hopes people use it: "What do you have to lose?... I might do it anyway. I may take it."
Trump clearly getting impatient with social distancing again. After Fauci reiterates the strategy works, Trump suggests ultimately more could die "this way" and adds: "We went this extra period of time. But I said it from the beginning the cure cannot be worse than the problem."
Dr. Birx says critical two weeks for places incl Washington DC, Pennsylvania and Colorado, whose coronavirus cases are starting to spike up the curve, to "do everything you can" to stay home and bend the curve.
