Donald Trump offered a rare personal insight into the life of his 14-year-old son Barron Trump and how he is faring in quarantine during his latest White House briefing on the coronavirus outbreak.
The president had tweeted a message of encouragement to the nation’s frustrated Little League baseball players earlier in the day, telling them to “Hang in there!”
“We will get you back out on the fields, and know that you will be playing baseball soon. We will get through this together, and bats will be swinging before you know it. In the meantime, take care of mom and dad, and know that this will not be forever!” he wrote.
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Mr Trump was later asked about his own youngest child, forced into isolation like millions of others across the US.
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A view of empty Bourbon street in the French Quarter amid the coronavirus pandemic in New Orleans, Louisiana
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Nyla Clark, 3, accompanied by her mother, Chavonne Clark, sits in a baby stroller at a corner in New Orleans, hoping to get a few dollars from an occasional passerby. Clark was a phlebotomist with a local company until she lost her job because of the coronavirus pandemic. She is waiting for unemployment
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A man boards a streetcar
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Jackson Square, normally bustling with tourists, is seen deserted
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Words from Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” are painted onto plywood covering the window of a closed business
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Street performer Eddie Webb looks around the nearly deserted French Quarter looking to make money
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Boarded up businesses
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The normally bustling tourist mecca of Bourbon Street lies deserted in the early afternoon
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A sign along I-10 informing persons who travel from Louisiana to quarantine
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A man cycles along Jackson Square
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Elena Likaj, prevention department manager at Odyssey House Louisiana (OHL) which runs a drive-through testing site, takes the temperature of New Orleans resident Peyton Gill
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A man walks his dog past a boarded up business on Frenchmen Street
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An empty Bourbon street
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A meal is distributed at the Lantern Light Ministry at the Rebuild Center
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A woman walks in the French Quarter
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People practice social distancing as they queue up for a meal at the Lantern Light Ministry at the Rebuild Center
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French Quarter
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A sign is pictured in the French Quarter amid the outbreak
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A view of Bourbon Street
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National Guard members walk down Rampart Street
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A man rides his bicycle in front of a boarded up French Quarter restaurant
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A shuttered business is pictured on Decatur Street
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The normally bustling tourist mecca of Bourbon Street lies deserted
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A view of Canal Street
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A New Orleans firefighter works to contain an early morning fire
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A view of empty Bourbon street in the French Quarter amid the coronavirus pandemic in New Orleans, Louisiana
Getty
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Nyla Clark, 3, accompanied by her mother, Chavonne Clark, sits in a baby stroller at a corner in New Orleans, hoping to get a few dollars from an occasional passerby. Clark was a phlebotomist with a local company until she lost her job because of the coronavirus pandemic. She is waiting for unemployment
The Advocate via AP
3/25
A man boards a streetcar
Reuters
4/25
Jackson Square, normally bustling with tourists, is seen deserted
AP
5/25
Words from Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” are painted onto plywood covering the window of a closed business
AFP via Getty
6/25
Street performer Eddie Webb looks around the nearly deserted French Quarter looking to make money
AP
7/25
Boarded up businesses
Reuters
8/25
The normally bustling tourist mecca of Bourbon Street lies deserted in the early afternoon
Reuters
9/25
A sign along I-10 informing persons who travel from Louisiana to quarantine
AP
10/25
A man cycles along Jackson Square
AFP via Getty
11/25
Elena Likaj, prevention department manager at Odyssey House Louisiana (OHL) which runs a drive-through testing site, takes the temperature of New Orleans resident Peyton Gill
Reuters
12/25
A man walks his dog past a boarded up business on Frenchmen Street
Reuters
13/25
An empty Bourbon street
Getty
14/25
A meal is distributed at the Lantern Light Ministry at the Rebuild Center
Reuters
15/25
A woman walks in the French Quarter
Reuters
16/25
People practice social distancing as they queue up for a meal at the Lantern Light Ministry at the Rebuild Center
Reuters
17/25
French Quarter
Getty
18/25
A sign is pictured in the French Quarter amid the outbreak
Reuters
19/25
A view of Bourbon Street
Reuters
20/25
National Guard members walk down Rampart Street
AFP via Getty
21/25
A man rides his bicycle in front of a boarded up French Quarter restaurant
Reuters
22/25
A shuttered business is pictured on Decatur Street
AFP via Getty
23/25
The normally bustling tourist mecca of Bourbon Street lies deserted
Reuters
24/25
A view of Canal Street
Reuters
25/25
A New Orleans firefighter works to contain an early morning fire
Reuters
“He’s a good athlete, and he loves soccer, and he’s like everyone else. I mean, everything’s shut down,” the president responded. “He’s in his room. He’s happy, but he’s not as happy as he could be. He’d like to be playing sports.”
“Let’s see what happens, but what he have to get back, remember that. We have to get back,” he continued, quickly pivoting to the primary theme of the session: namely, that he is losing patience with the national shutdown’s impact on the American economy and is desperate for life to return to normal.
Despite the starkness of his opening remarks, in which the president warned that the pandemic is approaching its peak and “there will be a lot of death, unfortunately… There will be death”, he swiftly returned to making the case for reopening the US for business, whatever the risk of worsening the spread of the Co-19 contagion.
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“This country was not designed to be closed,” he said. “The cure cannot be worse than the problem.”
He repeated that soundbite throughout the press conference, even when Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, gave an impassioned answer on the importance of Americans sticking to social distancing guidelines.
“Mitigation does work,” Mr Trump interjected. “But again, we’re not going to destroy our country. We have to get back… We have a big decision to make at a certain point.
“I’ve said it from the beginning, the cure cannot be worse than the problem itself.”
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The president had initially suggested the country could reopen by Easter but rowed back on that optimistic assessment after seeing projections of a staggering death toll even if restrictive measures remain in place.
But just days after extending tough national guidelines through to the end of April, staring down historic levels of unemployment and an economic standstill, he was talking about rebooting as soon as possible and speaking on Saturday with representatives from the National Basketball Association, National Football League and Major League Baseball about filling arenas again.
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“They want to get back,” he said of his call with the commissioners. “They gotta get back. They can’t do this. Their sports weren’t designed for it. The whole concept of our nation wasn’t designed for it. We’re gonna have to get back. We wanna get back soon.”
The president’s answers in the session otherwise saw him again hitting out at “false rumours” being perpetuated by the media, declining to name which reports he was referring to, again taking exception to a question from a female journalist and again expressing hurt that New York governor Andrew Cuomo had been insufficiently grateful to him for federal support sourcing medical equipment and ventilators as the state battles the virus.
Bizarrely, he also suggested the embattled north eastern state did not really need the ventilators at all.
“When they know they do not need it, they want it anyway,” he said. ”It gives them that extra feeling of satisfaction, but we cannot do that. It is not even possible. We are a backup.”
The number of people infected with coronavirus in the US has exceeded 300,000, with the death toll climbing past 8,400.
More than 3,500 of those deaths have come in New York state.
The president also urged Americans to “try” an unproven anti-malaria drug to fight the disease’s symptoms, asking, dangerously: “What have you got to lose?”
