Piers Morgan urged President Donald Trump to tone down his rhetoric in his daily coronavirus press briefings. Piers, a long-time friend of Trump, warned that “continuing to exploit the coronavirus emergency to draw political battle lines” might cost him the November election, according to Daily Mail.
Donald Trump has been criticized for picking fights with members of the press, bragging how he handled the coronavirus pandemic and lashing out at state governors during his daily coronavirus briefings. Even his long-time friend Piers Morgan is critical of how the President handled these briefings, which he said he watched “with mounting horror.”
“He's turning these briefings into a self-aggrandizing, self-justifying, overly defensive, politically partisan, almost like a rally to him — almost like what's more important is winning the election in November,” Pier Morgan told CNN in an interview.
“You will win the election in November if you get this right,” Morgan said, addressing Trump directly. “If you stop making it about yourself and make it about the American people and show that you care about them over yourself, you will win.”
Morgan believes that failure to do so might cost him the November election. “And, conversely, you will lose the election in November if you continue to make it about yourself, you continue playing silly politics, continue targeting Democrat governors because that suits you for your electoral purposes,” he added.
As the POTUS, Trump needs to show authority, be accurate as well as factual in what he tells the public and show compassion. “On almost every level of that, Donald Trump at the moment is failing the American people,” Morgan said.
Morgan is also critical of how British leaders handed the coronavirus pandemic. He said that there are parallels between how the UK and the US responded to the health crisis.
“You have two populist leaders in Boris Johnson and Donald Trump,” Morgan said. “And all the tricks that they used to become popular and to win elections and to lead their countries are now being tested in a very different way.”
For Morgan, dealing with the virus is no longer about politics anymore. “It's not about partisan politics anymore,” he explained. “It's about plain war crisis leadership. What I've noticed with both Boris Johnson and with Donald Trump is an apparent inability to segue into being war leaders. They're still playing the old games of party politics.”