“Don’t be afraid of Covid”: Trump is backing off the election campaign



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US-Präsident Donald Trump riss sich nach der Ankunft im Weißen Haus die Maske herunter und grüßte seine Fans.

© NICHOLAS KAMM

From Can Merey, dpa

Washington – More than 210,000 deaths in the United States, tens of thousands of new infections every day, millions of unemployed, the economy in crisis – and then Donald Trump has this recommendation for his compatriots: “Do not be afraid of Covid,” writes the President of the United States in a Twitter message. “Don’t let it dominate your life.” Family members of pandemic victims are likely to view this as an affront. The same goes for many infected people. Unlike the president, they cannot count on first-class treatment, for example, an experimental antibody cocktail.

Trump leaves Monday night after three days at Walter Reed Military Hospital and returns to the White House. After announcing his decision on Twitter in the afternoon, his personal physician, Sean Conley, says there is nothing against discharging the patient, even if he “has not yet definitively cleared the hill.” CNN cited informed sources that Trump’s doctors had to persuade him not to leave the hospital on Sunday. The president was concerned that his stay there “would make him look weak.”

Trump wants to return to the election campaign

Four weeks before the presidential election, Trump can hardly afford to show weakness. In polls, the 74-year-old Republican is behind his Democratic challenger Joe Biden (77). Trump is now returning to the arena. “Soon I will be back on the election campaign tour !!!” he announced on Twitter on Monday. The Trump campaign leader is also currently incapacitated and has also become infected. Campaign team spokesman Tim Murtaugh announced on Fox News that Trump intends to participate in the second television matchup with Biden on October 15. Trump had ridiculed Biden in the first debate for always wearing a mask.

The Trump-friendly tabloid New York Post writes: “When the president returns on an election campaign tour, he will be an invincible hero who has survived not only all the dirty tricks used by the Democrats, but also the Chinese virus. It will show the United States that we no longer have to be afraid. ” Trump distributed the passage on Monday through his Twitter account, adding that he actually had the victory in his pocket before “the China epidemic” came to the US. “I will win anyway.”

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📽️ Video | Trump returns: “I feel better than 20 years ago”

How the virus is torpedoing Trump’s agenda

Troubled for Trump: Since his infection, the corona virus has once again dominated the headlines and he actually wanted to displace the pandemic from them. Shortly before catching the infection, Trump managed to do this for a short time when an issue fell into his lap: The death of liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg freed up a Supreme Court seat, which Trump held prior to the election on March 3 November. with his candidate Amy Coney Barrett wants to broadcast. If he succeeds as expected, it would be a triumph: then he would have appointed three of the nine Supreme Court justices for life and possibly shaped the court conservatively for decades.

Irony of fate: Trump introduced Barrett to more than 100 guests in the White House rose garden on Sept. 26, including a virus-infected super spreader. About a dozen participants tested positive in the following days; Most recently, Trump’s spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany announced Monday that she was also ill.

The controversial crisis management

The pandemic is likely to reduce Trump’s chances of winning on November 3; in polls, most have certified poor crisis management for months, despite constant self-praise. Trump was not a role model, he hardly ever wore a mask and persisted in hosting events. Trump himself has admitted that he has downplayed the threat posed by the virus, supposedly to avoid panic. It is more likely that he wanted to revive the ailing economy at almost any cost before the election. The fact that the virus has incapacitated the most powerful man in the world to such an extent that he had to go to the hospital does not look good.

Covid-Veteran Trump

Trump is now trying to use his illness to his own advantage in the election campaign. There shouldn’t be much more left for him. He seems to stay true to his line of downplaying the threat posed by the virus and praising his government’s fight against it. “I feel better than 20 years ago!” The most prominent corona patient wrote on Twitter Monday. “We developed some really great drugs and knowledge under the Trump administration.”

Above all, Trump now presents himself as a Covid veteran who knows the 7.5 million Americans who have been infected with the corona virus since the pandemic began. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said on Fox News Monday that the president understood “what millions of Americans had to experience when they came into contact with this disease.” With this twist, the Trump camp is likely trying to resolve a deficiency that has long been attributed to the president: that he barely shows empathy.

Trump in the “royal school”

Trump, who likes to trust his instincts and whose distrust of scientists is known, is now posing as a corona expert. “It was a very interesting trip,” he said in a hospital video he posted on Twitter Sunday.

“I learned a lot about Covid. I learned it by going to school. This is the real school. This is not “let’s read the books” school. His conclusion about the virus: “I get it.”



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