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And instead of embracing new empathy for his fellow coronavirus sufferers, Trump touted the experimental “cures” available only to him and walked out of the hospital declaring the virus is nothing to fear without mentioning the more than 215,000 Americans who have died. because of him.
The fact that this precise strategy has dragged him into historic trouble in the polls, particularly among women and seniors, doesn’t seem to weigh on Trump as he begins a three-week sprint toward Election Day, primarily to across the states he won four years ago.
Convinced that he can recreate the against all odds formula that initially prompted him to take office, people around Trump say he has learned few lessons from his illness other than a reinforced view of his own invincibility, both political and medical.
“I spoke to him last night,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, said Tuesday. “He felt like he needed to go out on the campaign trail. I know Vice President Biden is campaigning. I think it’s good to be campaigning.”
Narrow circle
Rather than recalibrate, advisers say Trump has attributed his current political fortunes to bad polls, even as he questions the decisions made by his campaign on television and travel spending. With many senior White House officials still working from home due to a viral outbreak in the building, Trump remains surrounded only by a small group of aides who have mostly beefed up his approach, including Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and the adviser. of social media Dan Scavino.
Where a different approach might have garnered sympathy, Trump’s refusal to change has opened him up to further criticism from his opponents, including in a new Democratic announcement openly suggesting that his lax approach to the virus is what led to his own infection.
“He was warned but ignored the evidence, held indoor rallies, turned the White House into a super spreader, and contracted the virus himself,” says a narrator at the scene, which the Democratic National Committee said would air. in battle states and on cable in Washington, where he is sure to get Trump’s attention.
Republicans who once expected a more serious approach from Trump in the final leg of the campaign, including the nomination of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, are no longer looking for him for clues. Trump has found little support among Senate Republicans for the new “big” stimulus package he now wants after suspending talks last week. The Republican Majority Leader said last week that he is avoiding the White House due to lax protections against the coronavirus.
Since he returned from the hospital more than a week ago, Trump has held no official White House events except for an overtly political speech on the South Lawn over the weekend. He has spoken with some foreign counterparts, including the British and Canadian Prime Ministers. His arrivals to the west wing, which have been closely followed, usually arrive later in the afternoon before his departure for the campaign.
Free advice
Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican and Trump ally, suggested on Twitter that the president try to correct the last minute messages.
“I suggest you use the pocket card on the podium with 5 short sentences about what you have accomplished 5 things that set you apart from Biden 5 things you will accomplish in the next 4 years,” he wrote Tuesday. “Focusing on these simple highlights will help you get the message across and it only takes 5 minutes.”
“Then say what you want,” he concluded.
Only that last piece of advice was exposed when Trump reemerged in the Florida election campaign on Monday. Trump delivered what is by now a fairly familiar litany of falsehoods and hype about his rival and the 2016 election, with little mention of how he plans to govern if reelected.
As usual, he targeted Biden’s mental acuity, a line of attack that has gained little traction in the months that Trump has been using it. The Trump campaign sought to back up the claims a day later, arranging a conference call with former Trump White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson with the intention of raising questions about Biden’s suitability for the job.
Jackson, who is running for a seat in the Texas Congress and also served in President Barack Obama’s White House, has confused former aides to Obama and Biden, who say his right-wing attacks and willingness to flatter Trump they bear little resemblance to the kind doctor they knew. . After spending 10 minutes detailing what he claimed was Biden’s mental decline, Jackson was asked if his assessment amounted to a medical opinion on a subject that he had only discussed on television.
“I’m not going to do a medical evaluation,” Jackson said. “In fact, I don’t even practice medicine at the moment.”
Trump’s most recent material on Monday was about his own illness, which he tried to use as evidence of his own resistance and not as a warning for ignoring public health guidelines. Although he threw masks at the crowd as he took the stage, few of his guests chose to wear them.
Trump’s decision to present his illness as inevitable and as a “blessing from God” has disappointed some of his allies, who had once hoped he could use the events of the past week to take a new seriousness toward the pandemic. Instead, he has taken the opposite route, saying that the experience with the disease has only reinforced his impression that it should not cause undue disruption in people’s lives.
“The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself. The cure cannot be worse,” he said in Florida, repeating a mantra he first uttered in March when the pandemic was still in its easiest stages. “If you don’t feel well, if you want to stay, stay relaxed, stay. But if you want to go out, go.”
Trump vs. Fauci
He has reluctantly abandoned his efforts to convey esteem for Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease specialist, whose respectability the Trump campaign tried to exploit in television commercials.
After Fauci expressed his own annoyance at being used at the venues, Trump poked fun at his first misdirected pitch in Washington National Park earlier this year, writing on Twitter that his arm is “far more accurate than his predictions.” .
After months of intermittent snipers, the enmity between the two men that broke open just before the election does not seem timely for Trump. Many more Americans say they trust Fauci about the pandemic than Trump; By cutting back the campaign ad in which Fauci praised the president’s handling of the virus, his campaign hoped that some of that reliability would rub off.
“I think it’s really unfortunate and really disappointing that they did that. It is so clear that I am not a political person. And I have never, directly or indirectly, supported a political candidate,” Fauci told CNN’s Jake Tapper in “The Directing. . “
When asked about the prospects of the Trump campaign running a second ad with his remarks out of context, Fauci issued a veiled warning.
“That would be outrageous, if they do. In fact, that could backfire on them,” he said. “It would be a kind of game that we don’t want to play.”
