‘He’s jealous of Covid’s media coverage’: Obama ridicules Trump at Florida rally

Barack Obama ridiculed Donald Trump at a Florida rally on Tuesday for the president’s complaints about the media closely covering the national coronavirus crisis.

The 44th president has recently abandoned traditional decorum where a former president refrains from publicly criticizing his successor, lambasting the 45th president in recent speeches for his response to the coronavirus pandemic, in particular.

At a drive-in rally in Orlando to boost support for his former vice-president and now Democratic nominee for the White House, Joe Biden, Obama took a tone combining mockery of Trump with indignation.

He spoke of record numbers dying of coronavirus in the US and asked rhetorically of the president: “What is his closing argument?” with the election just a week away.

“That people are too focused on Covid. He said this at one of his rallies ‘Covid, Covid, Covid’, he is complaining. He is jealous of Covid’s media coverage,” Obama said with mock incredulity as the crowd laughed.

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Obama mocks Trump: ‘He’s jealous of Covid’s media coverage’ – video

At a rally on Saturday in North Carolina, Trump did say those words and complained that the media was paying too much attention to coronavirus, even as he claimed record case numbers are exaggerated and downplayed the death rates.

Obama said: “If he had been focused on Covid from the beginning, cases would not be reaching record highs across the country this week, the White House would not be having its second outbreak in a month.

Staff working for Mike Pence, the vice-president, have come down with Covid, it was revealed at the weekend, just a few weeks after Trump, his wife and youngest son all had coronavirus and multiple prominent people tested positive after the event at the White House to nominate Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court.

Obama also roasted the White House for chief of staff Mark Meadows’s remark on television at the weekend that the administration was not going to control the pandemic.

Obama said: “Winter is coming. They are waving the white flag of surrender. Florida, we can’t afford four more years of this, that’s why we’ve got to send Joe Biden to the White House.”

Trump tweeted that it was a “no crowd, fake speech” and slammed conservative Fox News for airing it.

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