Ross: Is Ivanka the key to calmer White House briefings?
Apr 29, 2020, 7:48 AM | Updated: 11:34 am
President Trump and his daughter Ivanka. (Getty Images)
(Getty Images)
The president’s White House briefings can be erratic. But yesterday’s session was different.
The event was arranged by his daughter Ivanka to highlight struggling small businesses being kept alive by the Payroll Protection Act.
When it was time to take questions, President Trump did some finger-wagging at the press, but it was remarkably gentle.
“I watched your report on NBC today, it was an incorrect report,” he said.
See? He wasn’t angry, just disappointed.
Even when he got the perennial question from CNN: “Why did you play down the epidemic back in February?”
“Many very good experts said this would never affect the United States, it wouldn’t affect anything outside China, so we were listening to experts but the experts got it wrong, a lot of people got it wrong,” he noted.
He admitted being wrong and didn’t even ridicule CNN’s ratings!
At one point he even thanked a reporter from Yahoo.
“And thank you for the apology, I appreciate it, that was very nice, Yahoo. I appreciate it was very nice,” Trump said.
The reporter had inaccurately claimed that South Korea had done more testing than the United States. Trump could have rubbed it in, but he didn’t.
Why not? I think it’s because Ivanka was there. I know I behave better when my daughter’s in the room. So, not to tell the press office how to do its job, but she really needs to hang out there more often.
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