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 cancelled 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, Trump veered off to attack “Sleepy Joe” Biden, complain about being persecuted and make some 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. 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.

“Yeah, we’ve lost a lot of people,” he said. “But if you look at what original projections were, 2.2 million, we’re probably heading to 60,000, 70,000. It’s far too many. One person is too many for this. And I think we’ve made a lot of really good decisions.”

Pressed on his offhand suggestion last week that experts should study whether ingesting or injecting disinfectant could counter the virus, a comment that set off warnings by health agencies that doing so could be fatal, the President brushed it off quickly and moved on. “I can’t imagine why,” he said when told that some Americans might try it, putting their lives at risk. Asked if he took responsibility, he said, “No, I don’t.”

The furore over the disinfectant comments, which the President later claimed were sarcastic, prompted deep anger last week. Trump then spent much of the weekend railing on Twitter about the news media. He opted not to hold briefings on Saturday or Sunday even though for the most part he has been doing them seven days a week.

“There has never been, in the history of our Country, a more vicious or hostile Lamestream Media than there is right now, even in the midst of a National Emergency, the Invisible Enemy!” Trump wrote on Twitter on Monday morning. “FAKE NEWS, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” he added.

The first schedule issued by the White House for Monday listed a briefing for 5pm, but by late morning it was cancelled. Kayleigh McEnany, the newly appointed White House press secretary, told reporters that briefings would probably resume later in the week, perhaps in a different format.

But Trump hates being seen as managed by his staff, and once he saw some of the television coverage reporting that his own aides thought he should hold fewer briefings, he decided to host one on Monday anyway.