New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman accused President Trump of using “misleading” audio of her coronavirus reporting during a White House video at Monday’s press briefing meant to defend his response to the pandemic.
In the audio clip from her late March appearance on the Times podcast “The Daily,” which was played as part of an administration video of generally positive news coverage, Haberman said the president was “widely criticized” for stopping flights from China from entering the U.S., adding he was accused of “xenophobia” and racism.
“At the end of the day, it was probably effective, because it did actually take a pretty aggressive measure against the spread of the virus,” the White House correspondent said.
“Their use of the audio is misleading,” Haberman tweeted. “I went on to say I said he treated that travel limitation as a Mission Accomplished moment.”
“And then he did basically nothing for over a month. Which was our story yesterday,” she added in another tweet.
Trump also slammed the Times during the press briefing over its Saturday report on how he was warned about the possibility of a pandemic.
“So the story in The New York Times is a total fake,” he said. “It’s a fake newspaper, and they write fake stories.”
Critics of the president have slammed the administration for not acting quickly enough during the pandemic’s early days. Trump defended his actions, pointing to his travel restrictions on China on Jan. 31, saying he called for it before there were any COVID-19 deaths in the U.S.
Nationwide, the U.S. has confirmed 577,307 positive cases and 23,232 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.