Trump Defends Closing Borders to Travelers to Fight Coronavirus

There have been seven confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States, but no deaths.

Earlier in the day, Robert C. O’Brien, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, appeared on television to advise Americans that there was “no reason to panic” about the spread of the virus. Indeed, during his Fox sit-down, both Mr. Trump and his interviewer seemed more interested in allowing the president to focus on his grievances over impeachment and his re-election effort rather than elaborate on a global public health crisis.

“It’s been very unfair from the day I won,” Mr. Trump said. “Mostly it was unfair to my family.”

He derided the impeachment effort as “a hoax” and said he had not thought to delay his annual State of the Union address before the culmination this week of his Senate trial — an expected acquittal that Mr. Hannity framed as a “fait accompli.”

Mr. Trump then spent a large part of the interview insulting a slate of potential Democratic rivals. He and Mr. Hannity played a lightning round where Mr. Hannity invited the president to say whatever came to mind about Democratic presidential candidates, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York.

Mr. Trump falsely called Mr. Sanders a “communist” and claimed that he had been married in Russia.

“I think of communism when I think of Bernie,” Mr. Trump said. “Didn’t he get married in Moscow?”

Mr. Sanders married in Burlington, Vt., before traveling to the Soviet Union soon after, and the trip has been used as fodder by his critics as evidence that he has communist leanings.