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WATCH: Piers Morgan Slams His ‘Friend’ Trump For ‘Failing The American People’ During Pandemic

   DailyWire.com
LONDON, ENGLAND - MARCH 10: Piers Morgan attends the TRIC Awards 2020 at The Grosvenor House Hotel on March 10, 2020 in London, England.
Dave J Hogan/Getty Images

Despite having been fairly sympathetic to President Trump throughout his tenure while expressing a broad distaste for political correctness, former CNN host Piers Morgan strongly criticized the president for “failing the American people” during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an appearance on “Reliable Sources” with CNN’s Brian Stelter on Sunday, Morgan said that his distaste for President Trump’s handling of the pandemic began with his daily briefings.

“I’ve known him a long time. I consider him to be a friend, but I’ve been watching these daily briefings with mounting horror frankly because this is not what the president should be doing. He won’t want me saying this, but I’m gonna say it anyway,” said Morgan, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

According to Morgan, both President Trump and conservative U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson have failed to step away from “playing the old games of party politics.”

“They’ve got to be calm. [They’ve] got to show authority,” said Morgan. “They have to be honest. They have to be accurate, timely, factual with what they’re telling the people, and they have to have the ability to show empathy.”

“At almost every level of that, Donald Trump at the moment is failing the American people,” Morgan said, adding that the president has been “turning these briefings into a self-aggrandizing, self-justifying, overly defensive, politically partisan – almost like a rally to him.”

While some of that criticism of President Trump indeed has merit, Morgan did not mention the fact that the media has equally been playing party politics, particularly, CNN’s own Jim Acosta, who has repeatedly used the briefings to ask “gotcha!” questions that do nothing to help the current situation. Steve Krakauer, a former producer at CNN, has excoriated Acosta’s conduct during the briefings, arguing that it only feeds into the president’s claims about “fake news.”

“Jim Acosta wants to be famous. I’ve written before, three years ago, that Acosta clearly aspires to use this opportunity to spar with President Trump, #Resistance Signal on Twitter and generally build his brand to move on to bigger things – a prime time show maybe, or at least a few late-night TV appearances,” Krakauer wrote recently.

“Jim Acosta loves nothing more than Jim Acosta,” Krakauer continued. “But I’ve also half-joked that if we found out, years from now, that Acosta was actually a plant and was secretly working for the Trump re-election campaign, I wouldn’t be shocked.”

In the same interview with Brian Stelter, Morgan said that Trump should stop campaigning for the November election, and instead just focus on fighting COVID-19.

“What is more important right now is saving American lives, and I believe that the complacency that the American and British administrations showed in the first few weeks of this crisis has been extremely damaging to both country’s ability to deal with coronavirus, but it’s not too late for them to now get a grip and actually make the attack of the virus their number one priority,” said Morgan.

“I don’t care about the election. Nobody should care about the election,” he continued. “Donald Trump, if he’s listening to this or watching, you will win the election in November if you get this right. 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.”

“If you don’t get it right, more Americans will die,” he added.

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