Trump Spars With NBC Reporter at Coronavirus Briefing: ‘Your Network’ Called Me ‘Racist’ for Travel Ban

During a briefing with the White House coronavirus task force on Thursday, NBC Reporter Kristen Welker grilled President Donald Trump on his preparation for the coronavirus outbreak. He shot back by complaining that NBC called him “racist” for enacting a travel ban.

Prior to the exchange, Welker asked the president, “Can you bottom-line people, when can Americans expect their lives to go back to normal? Will that not happen until there’s a vaccine?”

“I hope very soon, we’ll see, this is uncharted territory, as you know. We think we have ideas … we’ve pulled together as a nation … people are listening and they’re really doing a great job. This country is an amazing country,” Trump responded.

“Could have been stopped pretty easily if we had known about it a number of months before we started reading about it… it could have been stopped in its tracks… unfortunately they didn’t decide to make it public and the whole world is suffering because of it.”

Welker faulted Trump’s preparation, asking, “You did say a few days ago that you did have a sense that this was a pandemic… so why was the United States not prepared with more testing?”

“We were very prepared. The only thing we weren’t prepared for was the media… I’ll tell you how prepared I was, I called for a ban from people coming in from China…In fact, it was your network, I believe they called me racist because I did that, Trump said back.

“Many of the people in the room, they called me racist and other words because I did that. Because I went so early, so when you say I wasn’t prepared, had I let these tens of thousands of people come in from China a day, we would have had something right now, that would have been — you wouldn’t have even recognized it compared to where we are.”

Watch above, via MSNBC.