[Tapper:] The Trump administration is trying to rewrite the narrative, today canceling the planned coronavirus task force briefing and instead allowing cameras to watch the president meeting with various CEOs before what is now called a Rose Garden news conference. It's part of a larger strategy to try and shift the focus to rebuilding the economy. This comes, of course, after that disastrous briefing last Thursday where the president mused aloud about the possibilities of injecting disinfectant into the human body as a possible coronavirus treatment which prompted aides and allies to further try to convince the president to stop leading the daily coronavirus briefings. And as CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports for us now, the president made clear through an angry Twitter tirade that he's not happy about the backlash he's facing.
[Kaitlan Collins, Cnn White House Correspondent:] As the president vents over media coverage, the White House scheduled, cancelled, and rescheduled his first appearance in front of cameras since Friday.
[Kayleigh Mcenany, White House Press Secretary:] We're not tracking a briefing for today because there will be a press avail at 4:00 p.m. with the president and retail CEOs.
[Collins:] The press secretary canceled the daily coronavirus task force briefing this morning only to announce hours later that Trump would hold a news conference in the Rose Garden this evening. President Trump hasn't taken questions since Thursday when he suggested injecting household disinfectants could help treat coronavirus.
[Donald Trump, President Of The United States:] It would be interesting to check that so that you're going to have to use medical doctors but it sounds it sounds interesting to me.
[Collins:] The president's new communications team is looking to avoid a redo of that fallout and is hoping to scale back press briefings that go off-script as one of his top doctors spent the weekend defending his comments.
[Dr. Deborah Birx, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator:] It bothers me that this still in the news cycle because I think we're missing the bigger pieces of what we need to be doing as an American people to continue to protect one another.
[Collins:] The White House is also expected to scale back the task force meetings. The group did not meet Sunday or today despite meeting nearly every day for the last two months. Trump spent the weekend behind closed doors, lashing out as he vented about media coverage that he says has been unfair. Within 48 hours, the president said briefings weren't worth the effort because reporters only asked hostile questions. He deleted a tweet calling for journalists to return their Noble Prizes, criticized Fox News and "The Wall Street Journal" editorial board, said "Washington Post" employees were slime balls, and denied reports that he is considering firing the Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. At one point, he also retweeted a conspiracy that death numbers of coronavirus are being inflated to hurt him politically. Without his usual outlets like golf or having lunch with friends, insiders say Trump is frustrated by internalizing negative news coverage now more than ever, and he's frustrated by internal polls that show he's down among voters. Now, Jake, we should note in the Rose Garden today we are expecting the president to talk about testing. He's supposed to release two documents, one laying out what the administration has done so far to ramp up testing and another being really a blue print for what they see going forward. Now, the White House had a briefing on this earlier to give reporters a preview of what these documents. They did not invite CNN, but we obtained the documents anyway and really what it lays out is how they envision federal government, state government, and local governments acting in the weeks to come as these states do start to reopen, in addition to the private sector. And we should note under the federal government section of this blueprint, it says it should act as a supplier of last resort which, of course, has been a big point of contention between the governors and the administration so far.
[Tapper:] All right. Let's hope they get that testing up to speed. Kaitlan Collins, thanks so much. Joining me now, CNN's chief political correspondent Dana Bash. Dana, you have some brand new reporting about the conversations that the Trump administration officials are having with governors as they try to ramp up testing. Tell us about that.
[Dana Bash, Cnn Chief Political Correspondent:] That's right, Jake. The vice president and other top officials had a call with all governors today. And as part of that call, they presented the documents that Kaitlan was just talking about. But more broadly, this was a follow-up to a series of phone calls, this is according to one of the governors on the call who I spoke with, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, where administration officials were data collecting from the governors, asking exactly what they believed they need when it comes to testing. So the call today was the vice president and others telling the governors, we hear you, we're culling the information, we're going through it, and we're going to get back to you in the next couple of days and let you know exactly what we think we can give you. And this according to the governor I spoke to is specifically about, you know, about reagents and about swabs, the materials that these governors are so desperately in need of in order to get the testing up and running. I should just add that the governor I spoke to said this is so key, having the visibility in what is coming is really critical to developing a testing plan. We can have any plan we want, but if we don't know what's arriving, we don't know how many sites to operate and so forth. So there's a lot of hope that this will work, asking the governors what they want and then delivering what they say they need.
[Tapper:] Let's hope so. Sources tell CNN in addition that some of the president's allies were worried that his comments in general at these long press briefings were hurting his chance for reelection. Now of course the Lysol-gate happened. Now the White House says the briefings, quote, might have a new look to them, a new focus to them, unquote. This isn't a president known to stay on message. What do you expect from the president in the rose garden in a few minutes?
[Bash:] I mean, it's really going to be the first test since he and his aides have telegraphed that there will be a change in how he presents his information and how he spars or doesn't spar with reporters. And I have heard, as I'm sure you have, Jake, from many Republican sources, allies of the president, they're breathing a sigh of relief that there haven't been a series of unwieldy press conferences over the past few days. They say it's pretty clear that the president, that he one source said to me that he, like a child, touched the stove, he was burned, because he was clearly embarrassed by all the fallout by his musings about Lysol. The question is, as you are clearly alluding to, how long is that going to last. And again, today's Rose Garden event will be one of the tests. It won't be a traditional press conference but he will be before reporters and we'll see if he can stay on message, as you said.
[Tapper:] We've gotten I wouldn't say used to but we have certainly noticed a pattern that the president tweets bizarre things, says bizarre things, and then, of course, there are all these bizarre retweets. This weekend was something else, a retweet suggesting
[Bash:] Yes.
[Tapper:] the president's rivals are inflating the death rates to hurt his reelection chances and a retweet of a deepfake which we have been warning about for years, people using images and technology to make it look as if public figures are doing things or saying things that they aren't. We expected it to come from Russia or China but this is President Trump putting it forward, a deepfake of Joe Biden. It's just indecent and obscene. I'm stunned to see it.
[Bash:] Stunned to see it when it is a president, but maybe not surprising that it is this president, because he has retweeted so many things that he should not have done, including something a couple of weeks ago that said he should fire Anthony Fauci which he clearly either realized or didn't realize. This is the danger of the president having his own megaphone with Twitter, especially when he's agitated.
[Tapper:] All right. Dana Bash, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
[Bash:] Months.
[Tapper:] Months of this nightmare with more than 200,000 lives lost around the world and there's still so much we do not know about the novel coronavirus. We'll dig into that with a former CDC disease detective. That's next.