US president Donald Trump resumed his attacks on the media on Monday, a day of mixed messages from the White House about the future of the daily coronavirus press briefing.
The evening press conferences have become a centrepiece of the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic but the president tweeted on Saturday that they were “not worth the time and effort”.
While a coronavirus task force press conference had been scheduled to take place on Monday evening, during the day the White House announced it was cancelled. However, a few hours later a press conference by the president was back on the agenda, with Mr Trump due to “brief the nation” on the latest on testing, according to White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
The future of the briefings had been thrown into question in recent days after a series of blunders by Mr Trump. Last week he suggested that ingestion of disinfectant and ultraviolet light could be a treatment for coronavirus – a theory that was roundly dismissed by experts across the globe.
Mr Trump later said he had been “sarcastic” when he spoke, and had been addressing journalists rather than medical experts in the room, though this was not borne out by video footage of the comments.
The president spent much of Monday tweeting from the White House ahead of a meeting with business executives later in the day.
“There has never been, in the history of our Country, a more vicious or hostile Lamestream Media than there is right now, even in the midst of a National Emergency, the Invisible Enemy!,” read one tweet. Another said: “FAKE NEWS, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”
Mr Trump namechecked several media organisations over the weekend in a series of disparaging tweets, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and even Fox News, his news channel of choice, which regularly endorses the president’s decisions.
He also tweeted that journalists should return their “Noble” prizes for journalism – apparently confusing the Nobel Prize with the Pulitzer Prize which is awarded to journalists.
Devastating impact
Mr Trump's war on the media continued as deaths from coronavirus continued to rise in the United States, though New York reported a fall in the number of deaths on Monday.
More than 55,000 deaths from Covid-19 have now been reported in the US according to some estimates, accounting for approximately a quarter of all deaths worldwide.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced that 337 new deaths had been reported in the state on Monday, another decline in the number of recorded deaths on a daily basis, although 1,000 cases continued to be identified each day, he said.
He added that the rate of hospitalisation was “flat”, but the aim was to get incoming cases down to a manageable number.
As businesses began to apply for a second round of funding of more than $310 billion agreed by Congress last week, the computer system for the Small Business Administration managing the requests crashed.
Lawmakers already agreed an initial $342 billion as part of its $2.2 trillion package last month, but the funds for small businesses ran out in less than two weeks.
The coronavirus pandemic has had a devastating impact on the US economy, with more than 26 million people losing their jobs.
Several states across the country began to open businesses on Monday, despite concerns about testing capability in the country. Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina were among the states to begin lifting lockdown restrictions, which will see restaurants, hairdressers and other businesses reopen.
But other states are maintaining strict social distancing rules. Wisconsin, for example, has stay-at-home orders in place until May 26th.
