31/03/2023

Despite declaring that his daily coronavirus briefings were a waste of time, US President Donald Trump returned to face the press today, covering everything from his previous comments on injecting disinfectants to North Korea. Here’s what you missed.

After threatening to abandon his daily coronavirus briefings, US President Donald Trump returned to the Rose Garden of the White House on Monday local time.
While it was a shorter conference than usual, Mr Trump covered a broad range of topics from Kim Jong-un to the US presidential election.
Here are the best bits of what he had to say.
There are plans for more testing in the US
Pushing ahead with his plans to re-open the US economy, Mr Trump took the wraps off new guidelines intended to help US states ramp up coronavirus testing.
He said the US Federal Government had plans to make enough coronavirus tests available so all states could sample at least 2.6 per cent of their populations every month.
“We are continuing to rapidly expand our capacity and confident that we have enough testing to begin reopening and the reopening process. We want to get our country open and testing is not going to be a problem at all. In fact, it’s going to be one of the great assets that we have,” he said.
He took the opportunity to add that “other countries” are calling the US to find out how to test.
This chart uses a logarithmic scale to highlight coronavirus growth rates. Read our explainer to understand what that means and what we can learn from countries that have slowed the spread.
The US is likely to record its one-millionth coronavirus case in the next 48 hours, but Mr Trump was optimistic about the future at the briefing.
“All parts of the country are either in good shape [or] getting better, in all cases getting better,” Mr Trump said.
Trump knows how Kim Jong-un is doing
But he can’t talk about it.
“I hope he’s fine. I do know how he’s doing relatively speaking. We will see you’ll probably be hearing in the not-too-distant future,” Mr Trump said.
Yesterday, South Korea’s Government dismissed rumours that Mr Kim is in a fragile condition.
Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul told a closed-door forum in Seoul that South Korea had “enough intelligence to confidently say that there are no unusual developments” in rival North Korea.
Donald Trump says he is aware of how North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un is doing and sends his best wishes
Trump said he doesn’t take ‘responsibility’ for reports of Americans drinking disinfectant
The Governor of Maryland Larry Hogan said at the weekend that his state had taken “hundreds of calls” from residents asking about Mr Trump’s suggestion that injecting disinfectant could be a treatment for COVID-19.
Mr Trump was in no mood to talk about the claims, and when asked by a reporter if he took responsibility for the comments, Mr Trump said “no, I don’t” and said he “can’t imagine why” there was an increase in reports of Americans calling poison hotlines about disinfectants.
He quickly moved on to other questions after the exchange.
A day after he made the initial comments last week, Mr Trump said he was being sarcastic when he suggested injecting disinfectant.
There are no plans to postpone the presidential election
Primary elections held since the coronavirus outbreak in the US have been challenging.(Reuters: Daniel Acker)
Americans nationwide will still vote on November 3 (November 4 AEST), according to Mr Trump.
He dismissed suggestions he was planning to delay the election because of the pandemic.
“I never even thought of changing the date of the election. Why would I do that?” he said.
Mr Trump can’t unilaterally move the election date, but there has been resistance from Republican party figures to plans to allow more Americans to vote by mail in November.
Overnight, New York’s State Board of Elections cancelled the state’s Democratic primary election on June 23, citing concerns about the coronavirus.
Joe Biden is already the presumptive nominee to take on Mr Trump in November, but Bernie Sanders’ campaign called the moves a “blow to American democracy”.
ABC/Wires