CBS reporter back for encore, has to be told 4 times to leave COVID-19 survivor meeting

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Fresh off Monday’s attention-getting confrontation with President Donald Trump, CBS News reporter Paula Reid came back with an encore act as she had to practically be shoved out of a meeting with survivors of the Wuhan virus COVID-19.

President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence met in the White House with people who’ve recovered from the coronavirus for about 40 minutes. At the conclusion of the meeting, which Reid was covering, a White House staffer is heard repeatedly calling on the reporter to leave.

The press pool was positioned across from the conference table where the president was sitting. As the meeting broke members of the media began peppering him with questions.

Four times the staffer can be heard calling Reid by her first name, each time her voice raising with intensity as the reporter ignored her.

https://twitter.com/rcale1776/status/1250168140585107456?s=20

“Paula, let’s go, we’re finished,” the staffer said, before having to physically usher the reporter out. “Paula! Let’s go, we’re done.”

On Monday, Reid was pushing the established media narrative that Trump was not fully prepared to take on the coronavirus outbreak and that his delay resulted in the loss of additional lives, when the president shut her down.

“You’re so disgraceful! You know you’re a fake,” he told Reid. “Your whole network, the way you cover [news] is fake. That’s why you have a lower approval rating than you’ve ever had.”

It was at the same briefing that Reid angered Dr. Anthony Fauci, asking the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases if his remarks were offered “voluntarily or did the president make you.”

“Everything I do is voluntarily. Please! Don’t even imply that,” an annoyed Fauci shot back.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Trump praised those attending.

“This is a group of people who in many cases, became quite famous because they went through a lot having to do with the coronavirus,” he said, according to Politico.

Included at the table was a grateful Democratic state lawmaker from Michigan, who told the president she paid a political price for praising him for publicly talking about the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment option.

“It is such an honor to be here,” state Rep. Karen Whitsett said. “And such an honor to be here among all you survivors. I just can’t say how wonderful it is to see your faces.”

“Thank you for everything you have done,” Whitsett told Trump. “I did not know that saying thank you had a political line. I didn’t know that — I thought just saying thank you meant thank you.”

Here’s a quick sampling of responses to the story from Twitter, with more than one reference to problematic CNN primadonna reporter Jim Acosta:

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