Trump Slams Press for ‘Fake News’ over Google Coronavirus Screening Tool

President Donald Trump condemned the press for spreading “fake news” about Google’s planned Wuhan coronavirus screening tool in a press conference Sunday.

The President thanked google for confirming his announcement of the tech giant’s planned screening tool on Friday, and said that the leader of Google had called him to apologize.

“I want to thank the people at Google and Google communications, because as you know they substantiated what I said on Friday.”

“The head of Google, who’s a great gentleman, called us and he apologized.”

“I don’t know where the press got their fake news, but they got it someplace.”

The President then held up a printed copy of Google’s press release.

“As you know this is from Google, they put out a release, and you guys can figure it out yourselves,” said Trump, before casually flicking the press release towards the gathered reporters.

“I’m sure you’ll apologize. It would be great if we could really give the news correctly. It would be so wonderful.”

On Friday, President Trump announced that Google is developing a screening website to help Americans determine if they’ve been infected by the Wuhan coronavirus. However, CNN then put out a report saying that Trump’s comments were inaccurate.

As Breitbart News reported:

CNN is now implying that the President’s comments are fake news.

“Google will not be publishing a national-scale website for coronavirus testing anytime soon, contrary to claims made by President Donald Trump during a Friday news conference,” claimed CNN.

“Instead, a health-focused subsidiary owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, intends to launch a small-scale website next week to begin to triage California-based patients.”

However, Google’s press release stated that after a trial in the San Francisco Bay Area, the company is aiming to roll out the tool more broadly.

The fact that Trump referred to “Google” rather than “Alphabet” does not make his comments inaccurate, as the two corporate names — the latter referring to Google’s parent company, established during a company restructuring — are frequently used interchangeably. YouTube is still frequently described as a “Google-owned company” even though it is now technically owned by Alphabet.