John Berman Calls Out Trump’s ‘Choice’ to Run ‘Propaganda-Style’ Video While Thousands Die From Covid-19
CNN’s New Day co-anchor John Berman took issue with what he described as a propaganda-style White House press briefing held Monday by President Donald Trump. The near-daily briefing is designed to update U.S. citizens on critical information and government efforts to abate the coronavirus outbreak that has cost more than 23,000 American lives, but on Monday, the presentation took a remarkably political tone.
For many observers, in the opening hour and a half led by Trump, the focus was a political defense of White House handling of the pandemic, and perhaps a more focused attack on media reporters asking critical questions of the administration. At one point, Trump showed a White House-produced video of media personalities and pundits making comments designed to paint the media in the least favorably light.
Later in the press conference, Trump admitted that it was a White House team led by Dan Scavino that put the video together. In other words, taxpayer dollars went into a video produced to defend Trump politically. Which Berman took great issue with.
“A thousand people are dying every day from the coronavirus, millions of Americans are trying to hold on without a paycheck,” Berman opened. “Every ounce of energy from every public official should be focused on them, on saving lives, on saving Jobs. Every minute, every resource spent on something else is squandered.”
“And it’s a choice,” the CNN anchor continued. “The president is choosing to use a press conference to focus substantially on himself. The president is choosing to use government resources on a tax-payer funded propaganda-style video that ignores or tries to row frame his own history and statements is one thing but the decision to spend so much time, so much energy, so much emotional investment on it is something else entirely.”
“And it is a choice. And more than a thousand Americans a day are dying from coronavirus.”
Watch above via CNN.
