NBC News White House correspondent Peter Alexander said President Donald Trump Sunday is “the leader of the resistance against his own policies.”
Trump is opposing his own coronavirus guidelines by tweeting “Liberate” to several states and backing protests there, Alexander said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
“I’m struck by the continued mixed messaging by this administration here. Consider the president with the ‘liberate tweets’ about Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia, all three states with Democratic governors, all three states are battlegrounds,” Alexander noted. (RELATED: Trump Says He’ll End Obama-Era Funding To Chinese Lab That May Have Spawned Coronavirus)
“You have the president as the leader of the resistance against his own policies. Right? The bottom line is, he’s back and forth once again on this issue. One day, he claims total authority. The next day, he’s blaming the governors. They put out the guidelines — the day after that, he says, ‘Hey, we need to remove the guidelines,’ in effect in those places.”
The past week saw protests in Michigan, Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Texas aimed at reversing stay-at-home orders that many see as a violation of basic civil liberties.
Alexander described Trump as “this me president and what is best described as a we crisis” who is claiming credit for issuing standardized COVID-19 isolation guidelines while pushing the states to begin to reopen their economies by his May 1 deadline. (RELATED: Governor Said He Tried To Call Trump, Pence To Find Out What ‘Liberate Minnesota’ Means)
“He’s trying to move the economy on, get things back to normal life [but] is now casting the blame for perceived failures on testing and other issues, if the economy isn’t to come back quick enough, on the governors here.”
Alexander suggested Trump should adopt a more globalist perspective and develop a “sense of togetherness right now. Acting selflessly, working together with other nations including, frankly, the World Health Organization.”
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the daily briefing of the White House Coronavirus Task Force in the briefing room at the White House Apr. 16, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Trump announced last week that he is suspending all federal funding to the World Health Organization because of criticism that the organization has been little more than a mouthpiece and apologist for China throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump has said the decision to reopen the country is “the biggest” that he has ever been faced with.