Trump gets annoyed at chief of staff for coughing during ABC interview, now it’s a ‘federal case’

It doesn’t take much for the Trump-hating media cabal to go after President Donald Trump, it could be something as little as Trump wanting to ensure that a nationally televised interview is clean.

During last week’s taped interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, Trump was in the middle of discussing the release of his financial statements when the chief of staff Mick Mulvaney coughed rather loudly. With his television background, Trump understood the coughing was picked up on film and asked to re-do the segment.

He was clearly annoyed by the interruption and firmly, yet politely, asked Mulvaney to leave the room if he has to cough.

After all, the president is taping an interview for national television.

“And let’s do that over, he’s coughing in the middle of my answer,” Trump is heard telling Stephanopoulos. “I don’t like that, you know?”

“Your chief of staff,” the ABC anchor interjected, ratting out the culprit who was off camera.

“If you’re going to cough, please leave the room,” the president then told Mulvaney, shaking his head. “You just can’t, you just can’t cough.”

It’s not clear if Mulvaney left the room or not.

It wasn’t a live interview, which afforded Trump the opportunity for a do-over, yet when ABC broadcast the interview Sunday, instead of extending the professional courtesy of an edit, the network included the segment.

Not only that, but ABC touted the clip on social media, as seen above — it’s not known if the network asked for or received permission from the White House to run the clip.

Either way, President Trump’s critics were all over it, beginning with the New York Time’s Maggie Haberman. And with her offering, the anti-Trump rumor mongering was off and running, as seen in a tweet from Washington Post reporter Jackie Alemany.

“Text from former 2016 Trump campaign staffer: ‘I was told by multiple people when I came aboard to never cough or sneeze while in the presence of Trump. He thinks it’s a sign of weakness and lack of control. Nobody ever recovers,'” Alemany tweeted.

Just like everything else about his presidency, Trump actions were taken in the worst possible light by those consumed with destroying him — even though any one of them would almost certainly react in a similar manner if they were in the middle of taping an interview that was going to be seen by the entire nation.

Here’s a sampling of other responses from Twitter:

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