Here's what CNN reporter Jeremy Diamond asked Trump at his daily campaign rally, er, press briefing Sunday:
TRUMP: I will tell you this. What i'm doing is, I'm standing up for the men and women that have done such a an incredible job. Not for me, but the men and women, admirals, vice president, if us might. But all of the men and women, thousands, tens of thousands of them that built hospitals in New York and New Jersey and all over this country. In record time. A thousand beds in four days. I'm sticking up for those people people. I'm also sticking up for doctors and nurses and military doctors and nurses. All I played today was Governor Cuomo saying positive things about the job the federal government has done. Those people have been excoriated by some of the fake news.
Don Lemon couldn't believe it.
"It seems like he's making your point because he played nothing about the people on the front lines. All he talked about was him, him, him and what a great job he's done. He's defending himself?" Lemon said.
"That's right. And that's why it struck me as a remarkable split screen moment. We have 22 million Americans who have had to file for unemployment as a result of this coronavirus crisis. We now have more than 41,000 Americans who have died of the coronavirus crisis," Diamond said.
"And I was sitting there in the briefing room watching the president talk about how wonderful everything is and how well his administration has done. There's a time for the president to perhaps tout what his administration as done and he can certainly make that case. That's his prerogative. It struck me as a damning split screen to see the president saying that on grim milestone.
"It wasn't just the clip he played from Governor Cuomo praiseing the government's response. It was also that he read a headline from an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. The headline is: 'Trump rewrites the book on emergencies' and somehow he was claiming what he was reading was not about him, but about the hospital workers, and the doctors. That's clearly not what the president was focused on today."
