At Tuesday's coronavirus press conference, in a confused rant, President Donald Trump echoed the emerging GOP talking point that impeachment may have distracted him from addressing coronavirus sooner — but then contradicted himself by suggesting his response was excellent and he wouldn't have done anything different if he hadn't been impeached.
"They probably illegally impeached me, in the sense that if you look at the FBI today with what happened, the horrible — nobody cares about that anymore because all they're thinking about is the virus," said Trump. "That's okay with me. You look at the reports that came out, it's disgraceful what went on. it's a total disgrace. They got caught in the act but you know what? We won't talk about that now."
"Did it divert my attention?" Trump went on. "I think I'm getting A-pluses for the way I handled myself during the phony impeachment, okay. It was a hoax, but certainly I guess I thought of it, and I think I probably acted — I don't think I would have done any better had I not been impeached."
The impeachment trial took place a full month before the president took any substantive action on the coronavirus pandemic, and for weeks in between he suggested the virus was being exaggerated as part of the Democrats' "new hoax" and it would go away quickly on its own.
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