Anderson Cooper on Monday tore into Donald Trump for “hijacking” the White House coronavirus task force briefings, accusing the president of using them as a campaign platform ahead of the 2020 election.
Trump is determined to “rewrite the history of his early and reprehensibly irresponsible response to this virus” at the daily news briefings, said the host of CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360°.”
The president downplayed the threat posed by the contagion for weeks as it spread, and his administration’s response as the toll soared has been criticized as slow and sloppy. The U.S., now the epicenter of the pandemic, has more than 367,000 confirmed cases and almost 11,000 deaths.
“What the president showed us today is what the nation’s top scientists have to deal with every day,” said Cooper, who said Trump was using the briefings as a “reelection platform” and “an opportunity to lie, to deflect, to attack, to bully and cover up his own deadly dismissals of the virus for crucial weeks.”
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