Implementing an exit strategy from the current COVID-19 shutdown of major economic sectors will be the most difficult and complex policy decision by any president in decades, argues Mark Alexander. President Donald Trump is balancing predictions from his medical advisers of 100,000 to 200,000 American deaths from China Virus with Federal Reserve forecasts of perhaps 47 million unemployed American workers due to an economy that has ground to a halt. And he has to do it all without causing panic and while trying to reassure an anxious public.

Enter CNN’s biggest self-aggrandizing Leftmedia jackass, Jim Acosta.

At Monday’s White House press briefing, Acosta asked Trump, “What do you say to Americans who are upset with you over the way you downplayed this crisis over the last couple of months?” Acosta then quoted several things Trump had said: “‘We have it very much under control in this country.’ ‘The coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. It’s going to disappear. It’s like a miracle. It will disappear.’ March 4: ‘We have a very small number of people in this country infected.’ March 10: ‘We’re prepared. We’re doing a great job with it. It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.’” Acosta concluded, “What do you say to Americans who believe that you got this wrong?”

Trump replied: “It will go away, and I do want them to stay calm, and we are doing a great job. If you look at those individual statements, they’re all true. Stay calm. It will go away. You know it is going away and it will go away and we’re gonna have a great victory. And it’s people like you and CNN that say things like that — it’s why people just don’t want to listen to CNN anymore. You could ask a normal question.”

The president continued: “The statements I made are — I want to keep the country calm. I don’t want panic in the country. I could cause panic much better than even you. I would make you look like a minor-league player. But you know, I don’t want to do that. I want to have our country be calm and strong and fight and win. And it will go away. And it is incredible the job that all of these people are doing, putting them all together, the job that they are doing. I am very proud of the job they’re doing, that Mike Pence is doing, that the task force has done, that Honeywell, and Procter & Gamble, and Mike and all of these people have done. I’m very proud; it’s almost a miracle, and it is, the way it’s all come together. And instead of asking a nasty, snarky question like that, you should ask a real question, and other than that I’m gonna go to somebody else.”

The press briefings have caused Trump’s approval rating to rise substantially. Much of that has to do with the informative and steady nature of the briefings themselves, but a big part of it is because people (especially his enthusiastic supporters) enjoy the tiffs he has with White House reporters like Acosta. These talkingheads obviously prefer to make themselves the news by asking ridiculous gotcha questions aimed not at informing or calming the public but at attempting to make the president look bad and score political points for Democrats. It’s Trump Derangement Syndrome at its worst.

To be sure, Trump is well aware of the approval polling and the television ratings, both of which are a big reason why he makes such a show of smacking down jerks like Acosta. But this is a crisis and the president knows it as well as anyone. He — and the American people — shouldn’t have to put up with such nonsense from small men like CNN’s most irritating egoist.