March 29, 2020

More Than 2,000 Americans Have Died of the Coronavirus. Trump Is Tweeting About His TV Ratings.

Can he get any more out of touch with reality?

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

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More than 2,000 people in the United States are dead and at least 135,000 have confirmed cases of COVID-19. But President Donald Trump has decided to use his Sunday to tweet about his TV ratings. His White House press briefings are as popular as The Bachelor finale and Monday Night Football, he boasted in a series of tweets on Sunday:

Even for Trump, Sunday’s tweets feel exponentially out of touch with reality. 

For weeks now, Trump’s daily press briefings have attracted an average of 8.5 million viewers on cable news. He uses the briefings to go on rants attacking the media and political opponents, and to share misinformation. News organizations, including Mother Jones, have urged TV networks to stop airing his press conferences live. Seattle’s NPR station KUOW made the decision to stop airing the briefings after observing a “pattern of false information and exaggeration.”

Only a reality TV president would brag about his popularity while the country is in the middle of a public health crisis. And, as my colleague pointed out in this ingenious video, Trump’s denial of the gravity of the situation sounds like the first act of pretty much every disaster movie ever written.

 

 

 

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Owned by no one—except you.

We just keep seeing it happen: Newsrooms owned by billionaires and corporations are spinning their own narratives, overwriting the truth, following only stories that keep them in the pocket of those with even more power.

Not here. We’re not owned by anyone. We’re not part of any cult that demands our allegiance to a bottom line. We’ve spoken up and spoken out while other newsrooms changed their stories—or cut them altogether—to keep the C suite happy.

Our mission is to find the truth and amplify it. That’s why we’re independent, nonprofit, and, crucially, funded by readers. The investigations on our website will always be free to read, watch, and listen to, but our newsroom is powered by readers who pitch in what they can so we can keep asking the hard questions.

Can you chip in today?

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