Trump is making himself the victim during the coronavirus pandemic that's killing Americans every day

• President Donald Trump presented himself as a victim during Thursday's press conference on coronavirus, complaining the media has not treated him "fairly."
• He accused the media of "siding with China" at the end of briefing intended to inform the US public on the viral outbreak and the response to this health and economic crisis.
• Trump has been widely criticized over his response to the coronavirus pandemic, particularly for repeatedly downplaying the threat and for not getting involved earlier on preparations in the event it reached the US.
• Public health experts have said that Trump's refusal to take coronavirus seriously early on has put the US way behind much of the world.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Throughout his presidency, Donald Trump has exhibited a remarkably consistent ability to make virtually any situation about him.

This tendency was on display once again on Thursday, as the president presented himself as a victim during a White House press conference meant to focus on an escalating crisis made worse by his disastrous response to a pandemic that's killing more Americans every day.

Rather than taking responsibility for early failures, or admitting that he downplayed the threat, Trump wrapped up Thursday's press briefing by complaining the media has not treated him "fairly."

The US is well behind the rest of the world in testing for the novel coronavirus, which is due to faulty test kits sent out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last month. Though it's clear the US is still struggling to make up for lost time due to these early stumbles, Trump on Thursday insisted the government was always prepared.

"We were very prepared," Trump said. "The only thing we weren't prepared for was the media. The media has not treated it fairly."

As of Thursday, the US had conducted a little less than 100,000 tests nationwide, according to the COVID Tracking Project. Comparatively, South Korea, which reported its first case of coronavirus the same day as the US and has a much smaller population, has tested nearly over 290,000 people.

South Korea took a far more serious approach to the novel coronavirus early on, and it's paid off - new cases have dropped sharply in hard hit areas; the country has reported 7,500 cases and 53 deaths. Meanwhile, the number of people infected with and killed by coronavirus in the US has consistently moved up each day.

As of Thursday, the virus was in all 50 states, with well over 11,000 infections and 165 deaths.

Public health experts have excoriated Trump's general response to the novel coronavirus, warning that his lack of urgency early on could lead to deaths that were preventable.

"The Trump administration's response has been abysmal. It's hard to imagine how they could've done it worse," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told Insider earlier this week.

"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," Jha said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily ... It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight - it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."

While Trump has shifted in tone somewhat over the past week since declaring the pandemic a national emergency, he has still continued to spread disinformation and is now attempting to rewrite the history of his response.

And at the end of Thursday's press conference, his big focus was not on what's being done to prevent more Americans from being killed by this pandemic, but on how poorly Trump feels he's been treated.

The president baselessly accused the media of being "dishonest" and "siding with China" in its coverage of coronavirus.

"It amazes me when I read the things that I read. It amazes me when I read The Wall Street Journal, which is always so negative. It amazes me when I read the - I don't even read The New York Times, we don't distribute it in the White House anymore and the same thing with The Washington Post," Trump said. These remarks came two days after the Chinese government announced it was expelling US journalists working for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post.

Trump described these outlets as "corrupt news," and went on to say only he knows the truth.

"Because you see, I know the truth," Trump said. "And people out there in the world, they really don't know the truth. They don't know what it is."