ABC New’s Kyra Phillips attempted a gotcha moment when President Trump called on her during his press conference about the coronavirus. She started out by pointing out that President Trump has received a lot of criticism about the flow of information related to the coronavirus. “In particular about Dr. Anthony Fauci. He is world-renowned in contagious diseases, and there are reports out there that he was being muzzled,” Phillips said in an accusatory tone. She continued with her unfounded statements, presenting them as facts, “Can you tell us that this widely-respected expert, Dr. Fauci, will have every opportunity to tell us the truth?”

Trump interrupted her and called her out for attempting to make her question seem like she was stating a fact, as he snapped back at her, “Well, that’s a very dishonest question.”

“Why is that a dishonest question? she asked.

Trump repeated, “That’s a very dishonest question because he has had that ability to do whatever he wants to do. ”

Dr. Anthony Fauci stepped up to the microphone to defend himself, “So, let me clarify it. I have never been muzzled—ever! And I’ve been doing this since the administration of Ronald Reagan.” He continued with his scolding of the ABC News reporter as he explained, “I’m not being muzzled by this administration. What happened, which was misinterpreted, is that we were set up to go on some shows, and when Vice President took over, I said let’s regroup and figure out how we’re going to be communicating. So, I had to stand down on a couple of shows and resubmit for clearance, and when I resubmitted for clearance, I got cleared. So, I have not been muzzled at all. That was a real misrepresentation of what happened.”

Watch:

The fact that almost 90 seconds was spent on anonymous sources saying that Dr. Fauci was being sidelined instead of really anything else pertaining to the #coronavirus was so dumb. ABC's Kyra Phillips (who's usually not bad) doing her best Jim Acosta impression pic.twitter.com/x1YDRRGC5k — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 29, 2020

Trump administration -1, Fake News – 0