President Donald Trump has been known to clash with the journalists during press conferences, especially over the past several weeks when he conducted almost daily press briefings. The latest White House press conference appeared to be no different as Trump abruptly ended the conference after being questioned regarding testing.
The Guardian reports that the latest White House briefing took place in the Rose Garden. During the question and answer segment following his announcements and statements, CBS News White House correspondent Weijia Jiang questioned why Trump always places emphasis on how the United States is ahead of every other country in the world in terms of testing. Jiang followed up the questions with why Trump appeared to treat testing news and numbers as a competition despite the death toll in the country having gone over 80,000 and cases going over 1,300,000. It should be noted that the United States has the highest number of cases in the world.
Trump responded that Jiang’s questions may be better directed towards China. “Don’t ask me. Ask China that question. Maybe when you ask China that question you may get a very unusual answer.”
The exchange got heated when Jiang interjected before CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins was about to ask a question. Jiang asked why Trump directed that question particularly towards her. Trump replied that he was not directing that question only to her, but to anyone who would ask what he described as a nasty question. Jiang replied that it was not a nasty question. Collins was about to speak when Trump cut her off by saying he would take a question from someone at the back. Collins objected, and Trump abruptly ended the press conference by walking out.
The president has often been criticized for being condescending towards women, especially women of color. Many netizens criticized Trump for the exchange.
In other related news, former Trump supporter, controversial broadcast personality Piers Morgan criticized the president once again for his administration’s response to the pandemic. While speaking to The Sunday Times, Morgan said that Trump’s weakness is that he cannot show any empathy. Morgan even went on to say that Trump was the worst among the world leaders in terms of coronavirus response and that German chancellor Angela Merkel would be better off being the United States president instead.