White House reporter apologizes to Trump for question

NEW YORK — A Yahoo News reporter apologized to President Donald Trump on Tuesday for misreading a chart and getting wrong the numbers he used as the basis for a question on U.S. testing for the coronavirus.

Trump taunted the reporter, Hunter Walker, after Dr. Deborah Birx corrected the numbers during an Oval Office news conference.

“Are you going to apologize, Yahoo?” the president said. “That's why you're Yahoo and nobody knows who the hell you are.”

Walker later tweeted that he had misread a chart and was sorry about it. The president, at a later event, thanked Walker for the apology and said he appreciated it.

Walker had raised a comparison between the U.S. testing rate and that of South Korea during an impromptu news conference following Trump's meeting with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“Mr. President, overall South Korea has done five times more tests than the U.S. per capita,” Walker said. "Why is that?

“I don't think that's true,” Trump replied.

Walker said that it was true, and Trump directed the question to Birx, the response co-ordinator for the coronavirus task force. She said the U.S. had directed its initial response toward areas where there was an outbreak and later offered specific numbers, saying that the U.S. testing rate had surpassed South Korea's.

David Bauder, The Associated Press