CNN has, predictably, panned President Trump's Oval Office address of last night on the coronavirus. Take David Axelrod's comments. The former Obama aide turned CNN commentator managed to simultaneously elevate his old boss while savaging President Trump this morning.
Axelrod admitted that Obama's speech on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill "underwhelmed" and actually made matters worse. But he then claimed:
It was one of the big mistakes communications-wise that we made when I was in the White House. We felt it was important to get the president in front of the country to talk about this leak in the Gulf of Mexico. But we really didn’t have a solid answer about how we were going to stop it at that juncture. And so, the president’s speech underwhelmed, and it actually made things worse rather than better. But honestly, that was like the Gettysburg Address compared to what we saw last night.
Here's the transcript.
CNN
New Day
3/12/20
7:06 am EDTJOHN BERMAN: David Axelrod, and we’ll come to you in one second, David Gregory, promise. Do you have an example of where, look, I don’t think you had to correct yourself in the Obama administration over an Oval Office address. But after the Gulf oil spill, there was an Oval Office address and you actually regret it.
DAVID AXELROD: I absolutely do. It was one of the big mistakes communications-wise that we made when I was in the White House. We felt it was important to get the president in front of the country to talk about this leak in the Gulf of Mexico. But we really didn’t have a solid answer about how we were going to stop it at that juncture. And so, the president’s speech underwhelmed, and it actually made things worse rather than better. But honestly, that was like the Gettysburg Address compared to what we saw last night.
BONUS COVERAGE
- On Morning Joe, Scarborough said he was going to "upset a lot of people" by praising George W. Bush's handling of the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Other than maybe newlywed Ilhan Omar, who would have been upset by W's remarks at Ground Zero, or his first pitch at Yankee Stadium?
- Also on Morning Joe, Jon Meacham wondered whether the US economy could be heading into a "depression." Was Meacham expressing his fear--or fondest wish?
