WASHINGTON (AP) – It’s becoming a kind of daily ritual: President Donald Trump and a phalanx of doctors file into the White House briefing room each evening to discuss the coronavirus, producing a display of rhetorical contortions as the medical officials try to stay true to the science without crossing the president.
The result can be a bewildering scene for Americans trying to understand how best to protect themselves from the virus.
On Tuesday, for example, Dr. Deborah Birx aligned herself with Trump’s positive comments about plans to reopen businesses in Georgia and suggested that beauty salons and tattoo parlors there might be able to safely operate by using “creative” forms of social distancing.
But Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, later told Trump privately that Georgia’s reopening plan was too hasty. And the next day, Trump publicly denounced Georgia’s plans to start to reopen the state as coming “too soon.”
On Wednesday, Trump opened his daily briefing by inviting Dr. Robert Redfield, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to “say a couple words just to straighten” out the doctor’s earlier comments that the virus’s return in the fall could be even more difficult than the current outbreak.