Presidential historian drops the hammer on Trump for his blame-shifting press conferences: 'He's in high scapegoat mode'

Appearing on CNN with host John King, presidential historian Douglas Brinkley expressed disgust with Donald Trump's latest press conference -- ostensibly about the coronavirus pandemic -- saying the president has shown no sign of wanting to lead the country and is instead choosing to point the finger at others and try and blame them for his failures.

Speaking with the CNN host, the noted historian got right to the point.

"What are we seeing in an American president right now at this time of national and international crisis?" host King asked.

"We see Donald Trump ill-prepared to be the leader of this wartime effort," the historian began. "Yesterday the Washington Post talked about he just reached the 18,000 falsehood mark, meaning lying that many times to the American people. When you watch one of these briefings, you don't know what to believe."

"He's in high scapegoat mode," he continued. "Yesterday, it was John Kerry's fault and Barack Obama, the World Health Organization who is trying to do work in Africa and Latin America. Money is going to be cut and the Democratic governors are no good and people are trying to take your guns away from you in Virginia. He was all over the map."

"That wasn't leadership that I witnessed," he insisted. "What I saw was a president who is in re-election mode and the way he does that is to divide the country and he right now when we should be trying to heal the country."

[Editor's note: An earlier version of this story identified Douglas Brinkley as Michael Beschloss. We regret the error.}

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