20:31

From the Guardian’s Washington DC bureau chief, a recap of today’s press confernece:

Donald Trump delivered another White House briefing that suggested while he does not have much of a pandemic strategy, he does have a political one.



The US president framed state governors’ demand for ventilators as merely the latest strategic attempt to tear him down, as if akin to the Russia investigation or his impeachment. “It was all ventilators, and the reason it was all ventilators – they said, ‘There’s no way he’ll be able catch this one’. And not only did we catch it, we are now the king of ventilators all over the world.



“We have thousands being made a week and they’re very high quality and that wasn’t playing well, so then they said, ‘Testing, testing, ah, we’ll get him on testing’. Well, testing is much easier than ventilators.”



In fact governors’ demands for ventilators were based on the White House’s own projections and, far from being new, their pleas for testing go back many weeks. Trump’s words are also unlikely to comfort the afflicted for whom a ventilator is a lifeline.



Later at Monday’s briefing, the president’s ability to show empathy was again in question.

Yamiche Alcindor of PBS News recalled one of her interviewees: “A man said his entire family got sick because they listened to you and didn’t stay home. Are you concerned that downplaying the virus got people sick?”



Trump’s stunning reply: “A lot of people love Trump, right. A lot of people love me, you see them all the time, right. I guess I’m here for a reason. To the best of my knowledge, I won, and I think we’re gonna win again. I think we’re gonna win in a landslide.”



The president went on to tout his travel restrictions on China, adding that “before March” he also banned travel from Europe (it was in fact announced on 11 March). The back and forth continued. Trump asserted: “I haven’t left the White House in months except for a brief moment to give a wonderful ship, the Comfort –”



Alcindor interjected, accurately: “You held a rally in March.”



Caught red-handed, the president said: “I don’t know. Did I hold a rally? I’m sorry, I hold a rally. Did I hold a rally?”



For a moment, the illusionist’s mask had slipped. And it was at a briefing where, improbably, Trump had earlier invoked George Washington by declaring: “I cannot tell a lie.