We’ve all become accustomed to CNN’s Jim Acosta turning press conferences into The Acosta Show. It happened again today when Acosta suggested the president’s daily briefings were akin to “happy talk.” President Trump gave a pretty solid five minute answer to that accusation saying that, on the contrary, there’s been nothing happy about the briefings for him.
First, notice how Acosta uses “some say” framing for his question: “Mr. President we hear from a lot of people who see these briefings as sort of happy talk briefings.”
“No happy talk today,” Trump replied.
Acosta then continues saying Trump and other officials were painting a “rosy picture.” He then asked a series of rhetorical questions: “Do we have enough masks? No. Do we have enough tests? No. Do we have enough PPE? No.”
“Who said no to that?” Trump asked.
“We hear from doctors. We hear from health experts,” Acosta replied.
Trump then responded with his own rhetorical statements: “Do we have enough masks? Yes. Do we have enough tests? Yes, plus we’re developing new tests. Do we have enough ventilators? Yes. Do we have enough hospital beds? Yes. We’ve built 20,000 hospital beds.”
Acosta suggested that when doctors and experts “come on our air” they say they don’t enough tests. Trump responded, “On your air they always say that because otherwise you’re not going to put them on.” Acosta grimaced at that.
But eventually Trump hit his stride when talking about how he feels about the briefings which was the theme of Acosta’s question: “This is not happy talk. Maybe it’s happy talk for you, it’s not happy talk for me. We’re talking about death.” He continued, “Thousands of people have died. There’s nothing happy about it, Jim. This is sad talk. These are the saddest news conferences that I’ve ever had. I don’t like doing them. You know why? Because I’m talking about death.
“We’re talking about taking the greatest economy ever created, we had the greatest numbers we’ve ever had in almost every aspect of economics from employment to companies doing—look at the airlines they were having the best year now all of a sudden we have to save them, okay. There’s no happy talk, Jim. This is the real deal.”
A bit later, Trump added, “New York has experienced something that has been absolutely horrific. I saw Hart’s Island yesterday. I saw those people being buried yesterday.” He was referring to the first mass burials of coronavirus victims which began yesterday.
The situation in New York really is grim but Trump is right that it appears to be improving. Mayor de Blasio, who is no fan of Trump, said Wednesday that the number of people needing a ventilator is still a fraction of what was initially projected.
“By this point this week we thought we’d be seeing 300 or more people each day, more people each day, who needed a ventilator. Now it’s about 100 people more each day and that might even be going down,” de Blasio said on Fox 5’s “Good Day.”
Hospitalizations are also down, the mayor added.
New York is not out of the woods yet but there are some indications we’re beating the worst case projections. That’s obviously good news, not happy talk.
