The top adviser to Prime minister Boris Johnson called out the press for spreading fake news and stoking public anger over his decision to drive to County Durham during the peak of the wuhanvirus lockdown restrictions between March 27 to April 14.
At a press conference in the Downing Street rose garden Sunday, Cummings gave details of his controversial itinerary between late March and April - the decision he made to ensure his child could be taken care of, after his wife had come down with coronavirus symptoms.
Cummings said, “I don’t regret what I did. I think reasonable people may well disagree about how I thought about what to do in the circumstances, but I think what I did was actually reasonable in these circumstances.
“The rules made clear that if you are dealing with small children that can be exceptional circumstances.
“And I think that the situation that I was in was exceptional circumstances and the way that I dealt with it was the least risk to everybody concerned if my wife and I had both been unable to look after our four-year-old.”
“I believe in all the circumstances I behaved reasonably and legally."
According to Cummings the Prime minister was not fully aware of his itinerary because Johnson was also sick with wuhanvirus disease then. He mention it to him once in passing.
The reporters present at the conference were either not paying attention to what he said or they didn't care. Their questions were unnecessarily hostile and repetitive.
Sky news Beth Rigby didn't bother about objectivity. She basically lectured Cummings and baselessly accused him of not caring about the suffering of other Britons amid the lockdown.
"Thousands of people watching this, ordinary families, have put up with all kinds of restrictions and hardships regardless of their medical or family requirements,..." she said, part of a long self-righteous monologue disguised as a question for the top PM's adviser.
“Don’t you think you at the very least owe them an apology?" she finally asked.
Cummings was not having it: “I don’t think I’m so different and I don’t think there’s one rule for me and one rule for other people. As I said, I knew what the guidance was, it talks about exceptional circumstances with small children and I think that in all the circumstances I behaved reasonably and legally,” he said
The top government adviser pointed out that much of the public outrage is driven by false accounts of his itinerary spread by liberal news outlets.
"There is understandable anger but a lot of that anger is based on reports in the media which have not been true, Cummings said.
He added, "It's extremely regrettable that some of the media that were reporting some of these things that were wrong were told they were wrong but they reported them anyway, and that has caused a lot of anger.
"I know. People have shouted at me in the street 'Why did you go back? Why did you go back to see your parents, just because you wanted to?' But I did not do that."
Later at the daily wuhanvirus pandemic briefing, Boris Johnson again backed his top aide. He said, "To the best of my knowledge, Mr Cummings has just subjected himself to your interrogation for quite a long time now about these very detailed matters and has produced quite a substantial chunk of autobiography about what happened in the period from March 27 to April 14.
"I really feel that it would be wrong of me to try to comment further.
“I think people will have to make their minds up. I think he spoke at great length. To me, he came across as somebody who cared very much about his family and who was doing the best for his family.
"I think, as he said himself, reasonable people may disagree about some of the decisions that he took, but I don't think reasonable people can disagree about what was going through his head at the time and the motivations for those decisions."
The Prime Minister however regrets the initial public confusion and anger. "Do I regret what has happened? Yes, of course I do regret the confusion and the anger and the pain that people feel, he said. "This is a country that has been going through the most tremendous difficulties and suffering in the course of the last 10 weeks and that's why I really did want people to understand exactly what had happened."
The media and political foes of the Prime Minister's top aide have been accused of exploiting the situation to attack the government and endanger Cummings' life. Left-wing activists and reporters have camped out in front of his North London home, hounding and heckling him and his family. And controversial liberal ITV host Piers Morgan was as usual 'screaming on top of his lungs' on Twitter attacking Boris Johnson and his top aide.
Returning home Sunday night, Cummings called out the mob's hypocrisy. "You should stick to the [social distancing] rules," he told a scrum of reporters and camera operators.