Donald Trump is addicted to his daily pressers….

To the surprise of exactly no one, President Trump resumed his daily coronavirus news briefings on Monday, just two days after tweeting that they were “not worth the time & effort” and just hours after his own White House officially canceled the planned appearance.

The lure of cameras in the Rose Garden proved too hard to resist. For a president who relishes the spotlight and spends hours a day watching television, the idea of passing on his daily chance to get his message out turned out to be untenable despite his anger over his coverage. And so he was back, defending his handling of the pandemic and promising to reopen the country soon.

The on-again, off-again, on-again session was on the more sedate side of the spectrum seen in the six weeks since the president began commanding a slice of the homebound nation’s viewing attention almost every day right before family quarantine dinners. But even as he talked about the crisis that has killed almost as many Americans as the Vietnam War, Mr. Trump veered off to attack “Sleepy Joe” Biden, complain about being persecuted and make some of his favorite false claims.

He promoted his administration’s record on responding to the pandemic despite widespread criticism, blamed China for not stopping the virus in the first place, suggested he was open to suing states for imposing restrictions embraced by his own public health advisers and predicted an “incredible fourth quarter” of economic growth and recovery from the collapse of the economy.

He largely avoided the sort of anger he had displayed in recent days, even for questions that would typically provoke a sharp response. Asked if a president should be re-elected after so many Americans died in a matter of weeks, he argued that he had prevented it from being worse…..

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image …Doug Mills/NY Times