Politics

Joe Scarborough: Daily COVID-19 Briefings Show The World ‘How Ill-Equipped’ Trump Is

MSNBC

David Krayden Ottawa Bureau Chief
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MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said Tuesday that President Donald Trump is embarrassing himself before a world audience during his daily coronavirus task force news conferences.

“I don’t believe those [briefings] should go on. It’s not only bad for the American people to be watching that, because it gives them less confidence in their president, it’s not only bad for the world to see how ill-equipped the American president is for this [crisis], but even politically, for himself it’s bad for him,” Scarborough said on “Morning Joe.”

The former Republican congressman insisted that Trump is only hurting his own reputation and reelection chances with the news conferences. “It serves nothing but his ego. You look at a poll out of Florida where he is losing to Joe Biden by six points,” he said, noting that the survey indicted 56% of people in Florida “don’t trust what the president is telling them about the pandemic.” (RELATED: WaPo Media Columnist Demands Networks Stop Airing Trump Admin’s Coronavirus Briefings)

Claiming that the president is “getting away with just about everything,” Scarborough reminded viewers that Trump had once claimed he could “shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue … and he could get away with it.” The morning host suggested Trump can’t get away with the news conferences for much longer because they are “two hour ramblings of misinformation and lies and twisted truths.”

“Maybe he gets away with shooting somebody on Fifth Avenue,” Scarborough continued, “but he doesn’t get away with showing his ignorance for two hours every night. And that’s starting to show up in polls from Wisconsin down to Florida.” (RELATED: Media Rated Worst At Handling Coronavirus Response In Gallup Poll)

“Is this where … the Trump presidency ends?” he asked.

On Monday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rejected a petition from the media analysis group Free Press that sought to have media outlets that air the daily Trump news conferences investigated, saying the FCC should never interfere with “editorial judgements.”

President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House Feb. 29, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The briefings frequently feature Trump sparring with members of the White House press corps. The president shut down a PBS reporter on one occasion, telling the journalist, “That’s enough.”

CNN correspondent Jim Acosta has also sparred with Trump. When asked how he responds to criticism that he downplayed the coronavirus threat early in the outbreak, Trump responded, “It’s people like you and CNN that say things like that, that — it’s why people just don’t want to listen to CNN anymore. You can’t ask a normal question.”