Count former "Celebrity Apprentice" winner Piers Morgan in the group pinning blame and criticism on President Donald Trump during the global coronavirus pandemic.
"Donald Trump, in particular, I have known him a long time; I consider him to be a friend, but I've been watching these daily briefings with mounting horror, frankly," Morgan, a former CNN host, told current anti-Trump CNN host Brian Stelter on "Reliable Sources." "Because this is not what the president should be doing. He won't like me saying this, but I'm going to say it anyway."
A world leader in a war crisis, according to Morgan, must be "calm," "show authority," "they have to be honest," "accurate," "entirely factual," showing "empathy."
"And, on almost every level of that, Donald Trump at the moment is failing the American people," Morgan continued.
"He's turning these briefings into a self-aggrandizing, self-justifying, overly defensive, politically partisan, almost like a rally to him."
But a defender of Trump might argue against Morgan's blaming the president, using a critic's own past criticism against them:
- On "calm," the criticism of Trump suggested he did not take the pandemic serious enough. Trump has beat back questions from CNN's Jim Acosta during press briefings, saying he was trying to share "calm" and not fear.
- On "authority," critics, including Morgan, ripped Trump for claiming he had "total authority" to protect Americans during a national emergency.
- On "honest" and "accurate," when talking about causes of death at a recent briefing, critics said Trump was minimizing death.
Morgan also blasted British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was hospitalized with coronavirus, levying politically opportunistic criticism against both leaders, while claiming the leaders are behaving overly political.
"It's not about partisan politics anymore, it's about plain war crisis leadership," Morgan told Stelter. "And it's a very different thing. What I've noticed with Boris Johnson and with Donald Trump is an apparent inability to segue into being war leaders. They're still playing the old games of party politics."
After calling the coronavirus task force briefings "self-serving rallies," Morgan said people lack "trust" in Trump because they perceive them, coincidentally, as "self-serving rallies."
"Donald Trump's ratings are falling and the reason for that is — he needs to understand this — they're falling because people don't trust him," Morgan told Stelter.
"They think he's turning these briefings into self-serving rallies, and I don't understand why he can't do the basics of crisis leadership, which is to make the public come with you, and to believe you, and to feel that you're on their side and showing them the empathy that they need when so many people are dying."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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