Fox News anchor Bret Baier has labelled conservatives as hypocritical for their response to president Donald Trump’s claims of total authority, amid the coronavirus pandemic.

During his daily coronavirus briefing on Monday, Mr Trump claimed that he has total control over when states will ease social distancing measures.

“When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s got to be. It’s total,” he said.

On Tuesday, Mr Trump backtracked: “I’m not putting any pressure on the governors,” he said, before adding that “we’ll open it (the country) in beautiful little pieces.”

During Fox News’ The Daily Briefing on Tuesday, Mr Baier claimed that conservatives were being hypocritical, by not criticising Mr Trump’s remarks more strongly.

“I think that there’s hypocrisy here in that, one, if President Obama had said those words that you heard from President Trump, that the authority is total with the presidency, conservatives’ heads would’ve exploded across the board,” he said.

“A week ago there was a lot of coverage saying why isn’t there a national stay-at-home order in place, why isn’t there? why don’t they do this,” Mr Baier added.

“But now, it’s ‘no he cant open up’.”

Mr Baier believes that Mr Trump’s comments have a big effect nationwide, and told viewers that “the bottom line is that the president can really influence these governors and work with them.”

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He added that “as far as the top-down order, by the Constitution, you can’t do that. So it’s working with these governors to open it up in a rolling kind of open is what I imagine would happen.”

The president announced on Wednesday that the US will be suspending its funding of the World Health Organisation (WHO), so that they can review their response to the coronavirus outbreak.

“The reality is the WHO failed to obtain, vet and share information in a timely fashion,” Mr Trump said. “The WHO failed in its basic duty and must be held accountable.”