The president and his team had discussed the warning that morning, people familiar with the matter said, recalling an earlier time in the pandemic when a similar dose of real conversation gave Trump a boost. Doing it again could help mark a turning point for a seriously injured president, advisers reasoned.
Eventually, he teamed up with public health experts to call the masks effective and decided to carry his navy blue mask in his pocket to urge Americans to wear them. He acknowledged Thursday that some school districts may need to delay reopening, although he still wants students in classrooms to come soon. And on Thursday she finally dropped her demand for a crowded convention, canceling activities in Jacksonville, Florida, after advisers suggested the spin would demonstrate leadership.
The White House insisted Friday that nothing had changed.
“It hasn’t changed,” said press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. “Her tone has not changed.”
Indeed, Trump’s withdrawal came only after attendees showed the president a series of crushing polls that showed him not just following alleged Democratic nominee Joe Biden domestically and in battlefield states that must win, They also revealed that a growing majority of Americans disapprove of their handling of the pandemic.
“I think he’s finally beginning to understand it,” said a Trump adviser, noting Trump’s recognition of his grave political position and the reality of the pandemic. “But can he do this for the next 100 days? I think if he does, he wins.”
The change comes too late to erase the months Trump spent in denial, both at his convention and the virus itself. Canceling events and bowing to the facts now is not going to contain a virus that, in part due to some of Trump’s actions and decisions, is still spreading out of control.
But it’s surprising after months of moving forward with the reopening and minimizing science to now hear Trump tell a Fox News interviewer: “We are leading by example. We don’t want to have people so close together.”
Armed with those and similar numbers from internal polls, Trump’s political advisers and White House aides have urged Trump in recent weeks to take virus cases more seriously, warning him that his political perspectives are increasingly linked. to your handling of the pandemic.
Trump, who once declared himself a “wartime president” at the start of the pandemic, had resisted those pleas because he felt that assuming that role would act as a tacit acknowledgment that his attempts to contain the virus had failed. Instead, Trump continued to insist in meetings with aides that his focus should remain on the economy and on unrelated issues, such as restoring order on American streets by using federal law enforcement officers.
A Republican said Trump was finally being “responsible” after pressuring RNC and Trump campaign officials for weeks to present a convention in person.
But others questioned why Trump had pushed the issue for months when health concerns were obviously not easing. A convention official described CNN “a multi-million dollar debacle” in moving the event from North Carolina to Florida, only to cancel for the same reasons it was moved in the first place.
“I thought I had an obligation not to have large numbers, large numbers of people in a room,” Trump said during his Fox interview.
Still, while Trump bows to the reality of the coronavirus, he has not given up his stubborn drive for the reopening and his tendency to make misleading statements to try to give him an optimistic outlook.
While acknowledging that some school districts may need to delay its reopening, Trump this week continued to pressure schools to return in the midst of an uncertain environment, falsely claiming that children do not transmit the virus as much as adults.
That seemed to be directly contradicted by the White House chief health expert the next morning.
“We certainly know that children under the age of 10 become infected. It is just not clear how fast the virus spreads,” said Dr. Deborah Birx on NBC’s “Today”.
And it has continued to compare the US favorably with the rest of the world, despite the fact that most of Europe and Asia have significantly reduced their coronavirus outbreaks and are not experiencing a second surge like the US.
While previous iterations of the coronavirus briefings would have included a cast of health experts ready to either correct the president or provide more fact-based assessments, Trump has chosen to appear only during his events this week.
He insisted on Wednesday that it was designed to keep the briefings “concise,” but Trump was privately upset at being corrected by his advisers, primarily Dr. Anthony Fauci, the renowned infectious disease specialist.
Trump’s frustrations with Fauci had become more obvious in recent weeks as White House aides joined in, distributing a list of all the times they claimed he was wrong.
But on Thursday, when Fox News’s Sean Hannity was asked about his previous stance on the masks, he was given the opportunity to touch Fauci again, and Trump objected.
“These same experts were saying, don’t put it on, in a moment,” he said. “Now they say use it. So let’s go with them. What difference does it make?”
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