Trump Confirmed That He's Been Tested And Praised the 'New Stars' of the Coronavirus Pandemic
Trump followed up the Friday press conference that found him refusing to take responsibility for the nation's coronavirus response with an even more erratic Saturday appearance. The president announced some substantive information, like the fact that he's awaiting the results of his COVID-19 test, and that the travel ban will be extended to the United Kingdom and Ireland, but like so many of his public appearances, the conference veered quickly into the bizarre.
The president, long seemingly more alarmed by the market costs of a pandemic than its potential human toll, praised the Wall Street rebound that greeted yesterday's parade of private-public partnerships in one ill-timed joking aside. "I was honored to see that the stock market—you were mostly there with us—set a record in a short period of time, over 45-minute period that we had the press conference yesterday," said Trump. "That was a record, all-time record. I think we should do one of them every day perhaps. How about five times a day? We’ll do one five times a day."
He also described the crisis as making celebrities out of members of the coronavirus task force, who appeared alongside him during the press conference. "We've created a number of new stars," Trump joked of the gathered officials, who included National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases head Anthony Fauci and Vice President Mike Pence.
Trump, never one for the consoler-in-chief aspect of the presidency, acknowledged the COVID-19 deaths the US has seen so far without sparing a word of condolence. "As of this moment, we have 50 deaths—which is, a lot of good decisions were made, or that number could be many times that," he declared.
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