Trump says he will bring back daily coronavirus briefings

Dylan Stableford
·Senior Writer
Updated ·2 min read

With coronavirus cases and deaths in the United States continuing to climb, President Trump said on Monday that he will resume holding daily briefings on the COVID-19 crisis within the next day or two.

The daily televised briefings were once a staple of the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic. But critics often panned the president’s performances for downplaying the seriousness of the virus and for spreading misinformation.

They were discontinued shortly after Trump made his now infamous comments about treating coronavirus infections inside the body with bleach or ultraviolet irradiation.

“I was doing them and we had a lot of people watching, record numbers watching in the history of cable television, and there’s never been anything like it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “So I think we’ll start that probably starting tomorrow. I’ll do it at 5 o’clock like we were doing — we had a good slot. A lot of people were watching.”

“I’ll be discussing the China plague and perhaps some other things,” he added.

President Trump participates in a daily briefing of the coronavirus task force at the White House on April 23. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
President Trump participates in a daily briefing of the coronavirus task force at the White House on April 23. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Trump’s announcement of the daily coronavirus briefing comes after the New York Times reported that some of the president’s closest advisers, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, believe the White House should “downplay the dangers of the disease” and “avoid drawing attention to the virus.”

It also comes on the heels of an interview with Fox News host Chris Wallace in which Trump cited false and nonexistent data on COVID-19.

According to Johns Hopkins University, there have been more than 3.7 million confirmed cases in the United States, and over 140,000 Americans have died. Worldwide there have been more than 14.5 million confirmed cases and over 600,000 deaths.

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