Coronavirus: the week that everything changed for Trump

It is as if in January 2017 Donald Trump received a shiny new car. The best and most beautiful car the world has ever seen. And in July 2020, the President made an important discovery about it.

It has a reverse gear.

It was an extra in the car that he never thought he would need, and he certainly never intended to use. But on Monday, he put the car in reverse and struggled as he could with the gear stick and clutch, now he can’t stop the damn thing from rolling back.

Or to change the metaphor, and borrow the language used this week by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, to describe his Labor opponent, from the President this week there have been more flip flops than Bournemouth beach.

Just to recap, the masks, which the President used to deride as “politically correct”, are now an act of patriotism and should always be used when social distancing is impossible. Coronavirus, which until recently was described in most cases as a bad case of the cold, is now somewhat more serious and will get worse before it gets better.

Two weeks ago, the president insisted that all schools must reopen, or take funding away from them. Now he says that for some of the hardest hit cities that would not be appropriate, and seems much more empathetic to parents struggling with the decision to allow their children to resume school education.

• Coronavirus: from ‘We have closed it’ to 100,000 dead in the US
• Things the United States made wrong, and was right

And the big turnaround came last night at the Republican Convention in Jacksonville, Florida.

The President loves the crowd. A raucous and adoring crowd. The original plan had been to hold the event in Charlotte, North Carolina. But when the governor of that state said there would have to be social distance, the president turned ballistic, chased the governor, and angrily announced that the Republicans would go somewhere else. Jacksonville would be the place for tickertape and hoopla, and thousands of Republicans cheering and cheering.

Except it won’t be now.

It was a surprising and painful setback, and one the president made with a heavier heart.

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The announcements have been featured on three consecutive nights of revitalized White House coronavirus briefings. In this iteration with the President flying alone, and not flanked by his medical advisers. But they have also been much more disciplined than when the president spent a couple of hours on the lectern, reflecting on anything and more memorably on whether to inject disinfectant and sunlight into the body to treat the coronavirus.

I was in that memorable briefing with the President, and I came back again for his briefing this Wednesday. This time she came in and out in less than half an hour, stuck to the messages she wanted to get across (OK, no one had anticipated Ghislaine Maxwell’s strange foray into legal difficulties), and answered a handful of questions. He was not angry. He didn’t get into fights. He did what he came to do. And then off.

All I would say is that season 2 is not as fun as season 1, although the episodes are much shorter.

I sat arguing tonight this week in the garden of someone closely involved in the activities of the administration. It was an unbearably humid afternoon and thunder rolled through the city. We spent some time discussing the psychology of the President (yes, a common theme). And this person was saying that he has an old-fashioned male who should never look weak. Although he knows sometimes that it would be smart to give up ground and give in, that is outrageous.

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But if we are still playing pop psychology with the brain of the president, whose cognitive strengths we all know now: person, woman, man, camera, television, there is one thing worse than being weak, and that is being a loser.

And although in public, for fear of looking weak, the president insists his campaign is winning, and the American people love him, and polls showing him sinking underwater are fake news, the reality is more uncomfortable. .

Take just Florida, where Trump should have delivered his acceptance speech for the Convention. It is the epicenter at the time of the terrible increase in coronavirus cases. With a population of 21 million, last week it was diagnosing more new cases per day than the entire European Union (population 460 million). But Florida is also ground zero for the United States presidential election. Just think of Bush versus Gore in 2000.

• How was it that Florida was hit so badly by Covid-19?

It was a state that Trump comfortably won in 2016. It was a state he thought would spring up in November. But the latest Quinnipiac University poll has Democratic candidate Joe Biden 13 points ahead. Thirteen. That is massive. And there are plenty of other key states that show President Trump is lagging behind.

What has not changed in the last week is science. You can be sure that your long-suffering public health advisers have been beating on the same things as a broken gramophone. Masks, distancing, avoiding crowds. The President may have had a Damascene conversion to listen to his doctors. Possible, but I have to say improbable.

If we are looking for a meaningful “thing” it is this. Last week, Trump fired his 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, and installed a new one. And it seems that Bill Stepien has seated the President and given him the ice bucket of water. That the polls are horrible and go in the wrong direction; that not everything is lost but that it could quickly get out of control. That a change of direction and tone is urgently needed. Particularly when it comes to anything and everything to do with Covid-19.

• The revolving door of the White House: Who is gone?

It is worth inserting a condition here. I do not know Bill Stepien, although he receives very good reviews. But as brilliant as it may be, there is a kind of pattern for the president to make a new appointment, and then, for the next two or three weeks, he does as he is told, but then follows his instincts again; going with his instincts. The things he will tell you have served him best throughout his long and colorful career. But we are in new territory.

For three and a half years, the President has been able to define his own reality; fold and tailor facts to suit your own narrative. The coronavirus has not been impressed by their efforts. This has been an enemy like none Donald Trump has faced. And he has had to bow to his will. Not the other way around.

What happened this week is that what the polls show and what their scientists have been asking for repeatedly are fully aligned. And you really don’t want to be a loser in November.

The specter of these 180s has sparked many laughs from liberal commentators. The man who only knows how to double, now doubled over from the pain of these public setbacks. Oh happy days

But they should be more cautious. Conversion may be insincere; It may well be due to the need for polls, but what many Americans will see is that their president behaves rationally and normally; make decisions consistent with the scale of the threat facing the American people, and Americans fear. But, I hear you say, surely you won’t forget all those things the president said in March and April when he downplayed the pandemic and called for the premature reopening of the American economy?

Well, all I would say is that the circus is moving fast; they all seem to have incredibly short memories. Who talks more about Mueller? Or Russia? Or the impeachment? The beam of the lighthouse does not stay long anywhere. With our impatience for new developments, for new stories, for plot twists, it seems that we collectively suffer from attention deficit disorder. And this president understands it better than anyone.

Some will no doubt write that this has been the President’s worst week. If you win in November, you will be seen as the best.

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