CNN’s Bash, King Rip Trump’s Comforter-in-Chief Performance Amid 100,000 Coronavirus Deaths: ‘Just Not Who He Is’
As CNN’s Dana Bash and John King covered Donald Trump’s latest acknowledgement of the coronavirus death toll, they slammed the president for his inability to give more soothing comfort to the nation in troubled times.
On Thursday, Trump offered his sympathies to the families and friends of the 100,000 Americans who’ve died from the pandemic, though he used the bulk of his morning to advance his Twitter fights with his various political foes. As King reviewed Trump’s statement on the body count, he remarked that “this is the tone we expect to hear from our president, whether his name is Donald Trump or Barack Obama, Democrat or Republican. Today we’re grateful for it, but we don’t always get it.”
“Part of the issue is that that appropriate statement of grief was sandwiched in between countless tweets with his grievances about things that are really unnecessary and in many cases…absolutely inaccurate and hurtful,” Bash said in agreement to King. She went on by saying Trump is trying to move past all the criticism he has taken for his coronavirus response, “but you can’t move past it when you are the president of the United States.”
“This is not a president who emotes, and it’s just not who he is,” she said. “And the expectation is low for him, and it’s too bad.”
As King followed up by noting Trump’s inconsistency on Covid-19, he pointed out that the 2020 election is still approaching, and 100,000 deaths will be “a devastating piece of the Trump legacy. That’s not assigning blame, that’s just history. It happened on his watch.”
The conversation went on with a contrast of Trump and Joe Biden’s statements, which brought King back to Bash’s point that the president “sometimes seems to lack empathy.” This prompted Bash to lament that Trump’s first impulse is usually to stoke political strife, so either “he can continue to put fire on the culture war that already exists, or he can lead.”
He wants to go out and rally. He wants to do the kind of thing that makes Trump Trump. And it is a whole new world, but I think you’re right. Look, this is a day, a grim day for the history books. It’s one that our son is going to tell his kids and their kids about. And that is not something that the president will ever be able to get off of his legacy. It’s an unfortunate, sad, horrible thing, and he’s got to embrace it and acknowledge it in a way that at least gives some people comfort beyond a tweet.
Watch above, via CNN.
