President Donald asserted that he often knows more about issues than his own government experts on Friday afternoon, after publicly pushing undermining FBI Director Christopher Wray and Centers of Disease Control and Prevention Director (CDC) Robert Redfield’s testimonies on Russian election interference and the COVID-19 vaccine, respectively.
During a White House press briefing, a reporter brought up Trump’s tweets from Thursday night that chastised Wray for warning Congress about Russia’s efforts to “denigrate” Democratic candidate Joe Biden on Trump’s behalf and for correctly stating that “antifa” (short for “anti-fascist”) is an ideology, not a formal organization.
“How is it that you don’t trust your own experts? Do you think you know better than they do?” ABC’s Jonathan Karl asked, also pointing out that Trump claimed Redfield made a “mistake” when he said a COVID-19 vaccine wouldn’t likely be widely available until around summer 2021.
“Yeah, in many cases I do,” Trump replied.
Trump repeated his claim that China poses a bigger threat to the U.S. than Russia and that Wray’s definition of antifa was an “absolutely incorrect definition.”
“I speak up. I like to speak up,” Trump said.
On Thursday night, the President tweeted “Chris, you don’t see any activity from China, even though it is a FAR greater threat than Russia, Russia, Russia,” in response to Wray’s testimony that the FBI has seen “very active, very active efforts” from Russia to boost Trump in the elections.
Trump was also apparently upset by the FBI director stating that the agency did not consider antifa to be an organization.
“…And I look at them as a bunch of well funded ANARCHISTS & THUGS who are protected because the Comey/Mueller inspired FBI is simply unable, or unwilling, to find their funding source, and allows them to get away with ‘murder,'” the President tweeted.
Watch Trump below:
Trump claims "in many cases" he knows more than experts. pic.twitter.com/pREyaCdJEh
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) September 18, 2020
Correction: This post has been updated to correct the spelling of Robert Redfield’s name.
