Donald Trump’s past praise of China’s handling of the coronavirus crisis was used against him by CNN’s Jake Tapper after the president launched his latest attack on the network.
Trump on Friday baselessly accused CNN and NBC News of being puppets for the Chinese government who are “going out of their way to say GREAT things about China” with their coverage of the pandemic.
“The Enemy of the People!” he tweeted.
In response, Tapper acknowledged that the Chinese government had been “deceptive” about the coronavirus outbreak “from the beginning.”
It had whitewashed, lied and covered up the true threat posed by the virus that is believed to have originated in the country, he added, echoing reports on the network.
Tapper then took “a little trip” through what Trump had said about the Chinese government during the earlier stages of the outbreak, when the president repeatedly downplayed the risk of the virus and reportedly failed to act on multiple warnings about how it could spread worldwide.
Trump has since taken a sterner tone with China, however, in an effort to divert attention away from his own administration’s failures in tackling the crisis.
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