President Donald Trump has reacted in a "very confident" manner to the national coronavirus emergency, Christopher Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax Media, said in an interview with Newsmax TV on Tuesday, adding he was a "little surprised" by press reports the president was acting out.
"I saw him several times over the weekend," Ruddy told Tuesday's "Greg Kelly Reports." "I felt that he was in a great mood, very positive actually about things."
But Ruddy, who has a friendship with the president, said reports Trump has been acting "angry, that he was in a meltdown, that he was very upset about [people] panicking" were surprising, as he saw none of that over the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida.
"I've never known the man to panic, actually, or be somebody that gets ruffled," added Ruddy, and he thinks the president has handled the outbreak "pretty well" or "even better than most presidents" would have done.
"This is a flu-like virus," Ruddy said. "Flu usually can affect tens of millions of Americans. And tens of thousands of people typically die in a flu season. I think history will record that his actions early on, where the United States government restricted travel to and from China, and that we led the way for countries like Australia, New Zealand, and others, greatly reduced what came out of China here."
The United States has been less affected than other countries, such as Italy, which is in a lockdown with some 10,000 infected people so far, Ruddy said, and "it was all the president's doing that early on."
Trump came under a great deal of criticism over his response, particularly from the Chinese, said Ruddy, but he thinks the president is doing what he needs to do: "It's very hard to contain. He really can't be blamed if this thing does circulate."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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