President Trump Asserts His Hair Is Real in a Tangent During Windy Coronavirus Press Briefing
Strong winds in Washington, D.C. on Monday made for a slightly awkward press conference, as President Donald Trump stopped to fix his hair and once again defend his much-discussed mane.
“Whoops, there goes our box,” President Trump, 73, said suddenly as a strong gust of wind interrupted his briefing. “And my hair is blowing around, and it’s mine. The one thing you can’t get away with. If it’s not yours, you got a problem, if you’re president.”
Trump has often spoken about his signature coif, even earlier this year calling it a “beautiful head of hair” despite longterm public speculation over whether it is real.
As papers blew by White House cameras filming Trump on Monday, the president jumped back into his briefing and touted the USNS Comfort medical ship the federal government deployed to New York City, the epicenter of the American outbreak.
The total number of confirmed U.S. cases of the virus rose past 173,000 on Tuesday, according to a New York Times tracker. A reported 3,433 people have died from the virus in the United States.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has pleaded with President Trump and the federal government for additional aid as the state — and its densely populated New York City metropolitan area — have been working to slow the spread of the virus.
Trump has claimed he doesn’t believe states like New York need the amount of ventilators they’ve requested, while governors say they’re asking for more because the number of cases is expected to continue rising in coming weeks.
“I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they’re going to be,” Trump told Sean Hannity last Thursday, referencing a request from Cuomo.
“I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators,” Trump said. “You go into major hospitals sometimes, and they’ll have two ventilators. And now all of a sudden they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?’ ”
The novel coronavirus causes the COVID-19 respiratory illness, which makes it hard to breathe and in some cases results in severe pneumonia. Ventilators help pump oxygen into a patient’s debilitated lungs.
RELATED: California Governor Says Federal Government Sent 170 Broken Ventilators, but They’re Being Fixed
MANDEL NGAN/Getty Images President Trump speaking from the White House Rose Garden on Monday
On Tuesday, Cuomo laughed in disbelief during a press conference while he criticized the federal government for not having Federal Emergency Management Agency buy ventilators from private companies and then distribute them to states.
“You have 50 states competing to buy the same item. We all wind up bidding up each other and competing against each other where you now literally will have a company call you up and say, ‘Well, California just outbid you,’ ” Cuomo said. “It’s like being on eBay with 50 other states bidding on a ventilator.”
Elsewhere, Gov. Gavin Newsom said California received 170 broken ventilators and Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker claimed the state received surgical masks instead of the 300,000 N95 masks used for personal protective equipment, as requested.
The White House did not respond for comment about the errors.
Instead, Newsom said California decided to handle fixing the issues without the federal government’s help, “rather than pointing fingers.”
“We had those 170 brought here to this facility at 8 a.m. this morning, and they are quite literally working on those ventilators right now,” Newsom said Saturday, speaking from a local energy company’s facility that was fixing the ventilators. He added soon after, “That’s the spirit of California. That’s the spirit of this moment. Take responsibility, take ownership and take it upon ourselves to meet this moment head on.”
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