President Trump turned Monday’s daily coronavirus task force briefing into an aggressive defence of his own halting response to the pandemic and used a campaign-style video to denounce criticism that he moved too slowly to limit the deadly spread of the virus.

For nearly an hour, Trump vented his frustration after weekend news reports that his own public health officials were prepared by late February to recommend aggressive social distancing measures, but that the President did not announce them until several weeks later — a crucial delay that allowed the virus to spread.

Trump broadly mischaracterised an article on his response to the coronavirus, published Sunday in The New York Times, repeatedly insisting that the US had very few cases of the virus in early January — six weeks earlier — and angrily mocking a suggestion that was never made: that he should have ordered all schools and businesses shut that month.

“I am supposed to close down the greatest economy in the history of the world and we don’t have one case confirmed in the United States?” he said, his voice laced with sarcasm.

Begun as a regular update on the virus by Vice-President Mike Pence and the nation’s top public health officials, the daily evening briefing has largely been turned into a lengthy infomercial starring Trump, who brags about his administration’s efforts, mocks his critics and berates reporters.

But even by those standards, Monday’s briefing stood out. Instead of beginning with his daily recitation of facts about the virus response, the President first introduced Dr Anthony S. Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious diseases specialist, and then delivered a prepared defence of his actions, and an attack on the news reports about them.

Lashing out at what he called “a fake newspaper” that writes “fake stories”, Trump lowered the lights in the White House briefing room to play a video showing several Fox News hosts playing down the threat from the virus and governors lauding his actions to help them deal with the crush of hospitalisations.

The video included clips of Trump taking action to confront the virus, and did not include any of the many instances when the President said the virus was “under control” and would “miraculously disappear” with little effort. It also largely skipped over February and early March, when public health experts say the administration failed to provide enough testing for the virus.

Returning to the lectern, Trump then singled out individual reporters and news organisationsand declared that “everything we did was right”.