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Trump accuses cable networks of 'panicking markets' over coronavirus

Minutes after arriving back in Washington from a trip to India, Trump announced that he would host a press conference on coronavirus.

By QUINT FORGEY

President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused media outlets of inappropriately stoking panic amid mounting public health concerns over the coronavirus, breaking again with CDC officials who have warned of its threat to the U.S.

Minutes after arriving back in Washington from a trip to India, Trump announced that he would host a press conference on coronavirus at the White House Wednesday evening.

“Just landed. India was great, trip very successful. Heading to the White House. Meetings and calls scheduled today,” Trump wrote on Twitter 28 minutes after Air Force One touched down at Joint Base Andrews. “@CDCgov, @SecAzar and all doing a great job with respect to Coronavirus! Briefing this afternoon.”

Less than an hour and a half later, the president lashed out at the media, accusing MSNBC and CNN of overreacting to the coronavirus threat and of intentionally spooking economic markets.

“Low Ratings Fake News MSDNC (Comcast) & @CNN are doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus [sic] look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible. Likewise their incompetent Do Nothing Democrat comrades are all talk, no action. USA in great shape! @CDCgov,” Trump wrote.

“I will be having a News Conference at the White House, on this subject, today at 6:00 P.M. CDC representatives, and others, will be there. Thank you!” he added.

The president’s social media posts Wednesday represent the latest discrepancy in administration officials’ assessment of the coronavirus crisis.

Nancy Messonnier, the director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said Tuesday that a coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. is now inevitable, warning that “it’s not a question of if, but rather a question of when and how many people in this country will have severe illness.”

But later Tuesday, White House National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow offered a significantly rosier outlook, telling CNBC that, “we have contained this, I won’t say airtight, but pretty close to airtight.”

Trump himself has remained similarly optimistic, seemingly claiming during a Tuesday press conference in India that the U.S. was “very close” to developing a coronavirus vaccine. The White House later said the president was referring to the Ebola vaccine, which the FDA approved two months ago.

Despite White House efforts to downplay concerns, stock markets have plummeted this week amid escalating fears that the public health emergency could explode into a full-scale pandemic, with U.S. stocks suffering their worst day in two years on Monday. Trump sought to calm the financial instability in a tweet Monday, writing that the coronavirus “is very much under control” in the U.S. and that the “Stock Market [is] starting to look very good to me!”

The president defended the government response again Tuesday, tweeting that the “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”

Trump lamented, however, that “no matter how well we do … the Democrats talking point is that we are doing badly” in attempting to thwart the outbreak. “If the virus disappeared tomorrow, they would say we did a really poor, and even incompetent, job. Not fair, but it is what it is,” he wrote.