An incredulous Anderson Cooper took President Trump to task on Anderson Cooper 360 last night over comments making light of the pandemic and contradicting the observations and recommendations of national advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci.
"It's remarkable how sunny things can look from inside a biological bunker at the White House, where everyone has to wear masks around you and get tested just to come in contact with you," Cooper vented in response to the president's remarks. "It's a bunker so secure, apparently, not even the sound of your own leading experts can penetrate it."
Saying that the country is "knee-deep in a first wave" of the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's leading disease specialist, had noted in an earlier interview "the current state is really not good."
"Well, I think we are in a good place," Trump told Gray Television's Chief National Political Analyst Greta Van Susteren in an interview aired yesterday, disputing Dr. Fauci's claims. "I disagree with him."
"Yeah, that sounds good, I mean that sounds like a good place to be" Cooper mockingly observed after airing audio where Vice President Mike Pence is heard informing governors that the District of Columbia and "many southern states have seen a rise in cases" and science advisor Dr. Deborah Birx notes "rising cases in Oklahoma, Iowa, Washington state, DC and Montana" as well as "increasing case numbers in Louisiana, Nevada, North Carolina, and Tennessee."
In the interview with Greta Van Susteren, Trump went on to praise himself at the expense of Dr. Fauci. According to the president, Fauci flip-flopped on wearing masks, opposed the president's decision to "close off China," and that the country would be in "much worse shape" if he had listened to his scientific "experts." It should be noted that Fauci previously addressed the initial hesitancy around masks as low inventory could have caused frontline health workers to go without if the general population rushed to buy them all.
"We would have been in much worse shape," the president claimed in the interview. "You wouldn't believe the number of deaths more we would have had if we didn't do the ban."
Cooper disputed the president's claims, pointing out that Dr. Fauci had decried the practice of taking solace in the lowering mortality rate as a "false narrative." He also expressed a deep concern about the significance of the president's latest departure from reality.
"We are so deep down into a well of lies it's hard to even realize how dark this is," Cooper observed.
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