Coronavirus White House spin: perverse but telling
[T]he idea that the media is paying so much attention to the coronavirus story now only because they want to hurt Trump is really astoundingly stupid … So why is Mulvaney saying this stupid thing? He’s not a stupid man … By saying public concern over the disease is just hysteria whipped up by a partisan press, Mulvaney is conceding that the White House sees this not as a public health crisis but a public relations crisis. That is a great way to piss away public confidence in the administration, confidence they might desperately need if this goes bad.