Donald Trump recognized a current “big crisis” of cases in the country.
Washington, United States:
United States President Donald Trump pledged on Monday to resume televised coronavirus briefings and finally spoke out in favor of wearing masks, a marked change in tone as polls show him on the way to electoral disaster.
With just over 100 days until the election against Democrat Joe Biden, Trump is struggling to respond to public anger over his troubled month-long management of the pandemic.
Since the virus first came to the United States, Trump has insisted that it will simply “go away.”
But that solemn claim is now very tense even among loyal supporters, as they watch COVID-19 cases emerge through populous Republican-led states like Florida and Texas.
More broadly, polls show public confidence in Trump’s handling of the crisis stagnation.
At all times, he has tried to deny the seriousness of the problem, an attitude symbolized by his mockery of the masks and his refusal to endorse doctors’ recommendations for mass use.
Trump addressed that Monday with a tweeted photo of himself wearing a black mask with the presidential seal and a call for patriotism.
“Many people say it is patriotic to wear a face mask when you cannot socially distance yourself,” Trump wrote. “There is no one more patriotic than me, your favorite president!”
However, his tweet did not endorse calls by some for a national mandate to wear masks in public.
‘It goes very well’
Trump, a longtime real estate salesman and more recently a reality TV actor, says the real problem is that Americans are simply not listening to the right news.
Therefore, he is likely to resume Tuesday afternoon White House televised briefings that he held until the end of April, often accused of giving confusing or misleading information.
“I think it is a great way to get the information out to the public,” he told reporters. “We are doing very well in many different ways.”
Trump recognized a current “big outbreak” of cases in the country, but once again distanced himself from the responsibility for the problem, stressing that the disease is also devastating “Mexico, Brazil, many countries in Europe, all of Russia.”
“When you watch the news, the local news, and you watch it, it’s like it’s the United States. They never like to talk about what’s going on in the world,” he said.
Trump said the briefings will focus on the good news about vaccine development and therapeutics.
“We think we are doing very well in that regard,” he said. “I think I am going to bring in some of the great companies that are working very successfully.”
“We are really getting some very good responses,” he said.
PR fiasco
Trump has great faith in his ability on camera. He has transformed the image of the United States presidency during his first term with streams of unprecedented press conferences, tweets, and rallies.
But his previous stint as spokesman for the nation’s top pandemic ended badly in late April.
Trump often converted what was advertised as opportunities to provide information to the anxious public in irritating exchanges with reporters in the White House meeting room.
He finally left the events after a public relations fiasco in which he reflected on the possibility of injecting household disinfectant to combat COVID-19.
He later said that he had been speaking “sarcastically”, although there was no evidence of that at the time.
– Survey slide –
The president has always tried to minimize the severity of the health crisis, hoping that voters will focus on what he considers his good management of the economy.
In an interview with “Fox News Sunday,” he once again claimed that the virus, which killed more than 140,000 Americans and caused a major economic disruption, would go away on its own.
“I will be right eventually,” he said.
But with the virus on the rebound, he is accused of failing to lead.
Biden has opened a double-digit lead in election polls, and an ABC / Washington Post poll released on Friday showed that nearly two-thirds of Americans distrust Trump about the coronavirus.
Trump, however, appears to be waiting for his chance to return to the meeting room podium.
“We had very successful briefings. I was doing them and there were a lot of people watching, record numbers watching. In cable television history, there has never been anything like it,” he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated channel.)
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