President Trump is redefining himself as a wartime president, boldly acting to sweep away obstacles and mobilizing government and business to fight together to get us up to speed in overcoming a threat nobody anticipated. Yesterday's White House press briefing, held outdoors in the sunny weather, intensified the frenzy of TDS-addled media and other Democrats. President Trump's effectiveness — in reforming regulatory and bureaucratic roadblocks and mobilizing vastly increased production of necessary medical equipment in short supply — was on display even more vividly than before. He comes across as a leader who is dealing with an unexpected threat, learning as he goes, and tapping into the unmatched resources of the American people to fight it.



YouTube screen grab.

President Trump is a leader who actually leads, refusing to be constrained by the norms and procedures of the past that cannot be allowed to get in the way of the pressing necessity of fighting an unprecedented threat.

Here is video of the entire briefing, almost an hour and a half long. I will refer to specific notable moments below, with video cued to those moments:

Below, the president presents the good news on testing — that we have reached a million tests performed, more than any other country — and calls on Secretary Azar, who, like all the speakers, thanks him for his leadership in mobilizing multiple people and groups in working together to reach this goal.

The haters prefer to castigate the United States for not being fast enough to ramp up testing, measuring America (and Trump) against a theoretical ideal, and against countries like South Korea that were better prepared. This is an effective argument if the goal is to point fingers and wail about the past, but it does nothing to solve current problems. And it presumes that Democrats, who accused Trump of racism for banning travel from China, and who, like Nancy Pelosi, urged Americans to celebrate the Lunar New Year in San Francisco's Chinatown (or Mardi Gras in New Orleans) in densely packed crowds, would have magically had effective tests in place before the virus was even known.

Another federal bureaucrat, Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, spoke of regulatory obstacles swept away — many of which will probably stay swept away when this is over. President Trump's deregulation efforts are now on steroids, and Americans are getting the powerful message that over-regulation has been taking a great toll on the economy and productivity:

But the speaker who triggered the most extreme and ridiculous hateful reactions was Mike Lindell, "the My Pillow guy," whom President Trump identified as a "friend" and who not only touted his company converting most of its production to desperately needed face masks (50,000 a day by Friday), but also offered a prayer and positively alluded to President Trump. Lindell was the first of six CEOs to speak, and his company is the newest and probably the smallest of those represented. He is also not shy about appearing in his commercials with a cross visible hanging on his chest, which sadly is something that triggers many Trump-haters who also appear to hate religiously observant people, unless they are Muslims.

Twitter showcased exploding heads:

Trump just called the “My Pillow” guy up to the podium in the Rose Garden. You cannot make this stuff up. — Ali Velshi (@AliVelshi) March 30, 2020

The "My Pillow Guy" was at the Corona Virus briefing today? Boy oh boy, do we need SNL this Saturday. If this had been a SNL skit we would have thought it was fake, right? You can't make this shit up. Who is going to play the "my pillow guy" ? @nbcsnl @ABFalecbaldwin @AlecBaldwin https://t.co/j28Bucs7do — julie k. brown (@jkbjournalist) March 30, 2020

Look, it's hard to fill up 90 minutes worth of material every single day, so you need to get some sponsored material/infomercials https://t.co/GLawZaojsR — Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) March 30, 2020

CNN cut away from the live news event as soon as Lindell started to speak but resumed coverage after he left the podium.

When President Trump started to take questions, he handled hostile questions forcefully, denouncing them and pointing out how questions should be asked. The tweet below shows his response to Jim Acosta's attempt to look backward:

President Trump to @Acosta:



“It's why people just don't want to listen to CNN anymore.. Instead of asking a nasty, snarky question like that, you should ask a real question and other than that, I'm going to go to somebody else.” pic.twitter.com/GxYG2nGJ6I 🇺🇸 (@alx) March 30, 2020 — ALX

President Trump to @Acosta:



“It's why people just don't want to listen to CNN anymore.. Instead of asking a nasty, snarky question like that, you should ask a real question and other than that, I'm going to go to somebody else.” pic.twitter.com/GxYG2nGJ6I 🇺🇸 (@alx) March 30, 2020 — ALX

President Trump concluded the briefing with a hostile question about per capita testing rates that enabled him to slam-dunk the point that we are moving forward, "going to war with the army we had," and working effectively to overcome the deficiencies. He ended the briefing with a bang!