Hello, and welcome to day ??? of social distancing in the age of the coronavirus. On Monday, Donald Trump kicked off the week with a near-hour-long interview with his pals at Fox & Friends, and if you were worried that exposure to the disease had filled his bloodstream with antibodies that bring about reason, sense, and the ability to stay lucid, worry not. Instead, in the midst of an unprecedented crisis, the president focused his efforts on attacking the free press, Nancy Pelosi, Andrew Cuomo, and…windmills.
Asked by cohost Brian Kilmeade about a Washington Post editorial condemning Russia and China for spreading absurd misinformation about the virus—including, in the case of Russia, that it was made by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and in the case of China, that it had been let loose on Wuhan by the U.S. Army—Trump responded, “Number one, you don’t know what they’re doing. And when you read it in the Washington Post, you don’t believe it. I believe very little when I see it. I see stories in the Washington Post that are so fake, that are so phony. I have stories that are such fake stuff, and that’s number one.” Then he added, of governments spreading completely outrageous lies: “They do it and we do it…Every country does it.”
Trump later returned to the conspiracy he pushed throughout January, February, and a not-insignificant portion of March: that the press’s reporting on COVID-19 is singularly focused on taking him down. “They will do anything they can to hurt this presidency, and yet here we are with the best numbers we’ve ever had,” Trump moaned, apparently more concerned with his approval numbers than the number of Americans who’ve died from the virus. “I don’t even understand it when you can get such fake news from—New York Times is a totally dishonest paper, they’re dishonest people. Washington Post, same thing. I’m trying to figure out for three and a half years, who is more dishonest, who is more corrupt? The Washington Post or the New York Times? When I figure it out, I’ll let you know. We’ll have a special.”
Elsewhere during the show, Trump did not take kindly to a question about Nancy Pelosi’s comment that his initial, well-documented “denial” of the crisis was proving deadly. “Look, she’s a sick puppy, in my opinion,” Trump said of the Speaker of the House. “She really is. She’s got a lot of problems.… Don’t forget, she was playing the impeachment game. Her game where she ended up looking like a fool. She was doing nothing but—all she did for the first long time was impeach, impeach. This went on for years, I mean, if you think about it. That’s all she did. She didn’t do anything.” (Actually, if you “think” about it, the whole impeachment thing went on for a matter of months, but sure, what is time anyway?)
Asked a question by cohost Ainsley Earhardt that had nothing to do with Pelosi whatsoever, the president responded, “The federal government, we may get involved and take over that area [Pelosi’s district] and clean it up. It’s such a mess, it’s so bad, and yet she’ll sit there and complain. All she did was focus on impeachment. She didn’t focus on anything having to do with pandemics. She focused on impeachment and she lost! And she looked like a fool!”