The president has been rocking for days as a vicious rise in infections runs through the sunbelt, caused in part by governors who heeded his calls to open states before the pathogen was suppressed.
With a poll showing alleged Democratic nominee Joe Biden 20 points over who can best handle the situation, Trump has taken the rare step of performing a partial reversal, in the use of masks, although he is still reluctant to model one. in public. He also decided that outright denial of the worst public health crisis in 100 years was not working and has returned to the White House meeting room to spin the disaster as best he can.
The anchor of Trump’s most forceful new reports is a scripted opening in which he chooses the most hopeful aspects of a pandemic that has destroyed the rhythm of American daily life and has disrupted the economy.
But in its two briefings so far, its renewed focus seems more like a cosmetic political exercise than an attempt to provide the country with meaningful public health advice as the pandemic worsens.
One problem is that it won’t appear alongside public health experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx.
“They are informing me, I will meet with them. I just spoke to Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx is out there and they are giving me everything they know from now on and I am giving them the information for you,” Trump said. on Wednesday.
“I think it’s probably a very concise way to do it. It seems to be working very well.”
However, Trump made misleading statements that would never have been made by a public health expert, but which he seems to think are politically useful. He blamed migrants from Mexico who cross the closed border for causing an increase in cases, along with youths who attended protests against racism.
The president also stated that children with strong immune systems do not bring the coronavirus home and that all schools can open in the fall. It did not provide any scientific evidence for the claim, nor did it explain, for example, why children who often catch the flu and colds in class would not have a similar risk of transmitting the coronavirus.
And once again, Trump falsely claimed that the United States is doing “amazing things” compared to other countries while fighting the virus. In fact, the United States lags behind other highly industrialized nations in suppressing infection curves and leading the world in infections and deaths.
“The president does not want Fauci or Birx to be there because they are real-time fact checkers,” Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine at George Washington University, told CNN’s Kate Bolduan.
“Without them, you can say things that are misleading or false,” Reiner said, using the president’s misleading interpretation of statistics about a positive test rate as an example.
“The truth is the truth and the more the public understands, the better the public will stick, you know, a prudent policy,” he said.
Trump twists science at school openings
Trump’s approach to handling the virus, which tends to put his own political interests above science-based reasoning, extends to reopening schools, which he wants to do to make the country appear to return to an appearance of normality. before the fall election.
But experts disagree with his calls.
“He wants to open schools regardless of what science says. And the science is pretty clear. If he opens schools in areas or school districts where there is a high level of virus transmission, say if he would do this in Houston today or San Antonio or Phoenix will fail, “said Peter Hotez, dean of Baylor University’s National School of Tropical Medicine.
“It will fail because children not only transmit the virus, but adults enter and leave schools,” Hotez said on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.”
“What will happen in two weeks, teachers will start to enter hospitals, ICUs. They will be bus drivers, cafeteria workers and parents will start to get sick. It is unsustainable. It is not sustainable.”
The president also dwells on the few positive developments amid a grim moment as the country battles a virus that has already killed more than 140,000 Americans.
On Wednesday, he promoted a new agreement with Pfizer to produce and deliver 100 million doses of a vaccine when it becomes available. With an eye on the older voters who have grown cold with him, according to the latest polls, he announced new measures to help nursing homes and long-term care facilities.
Still, for once, and despite much of his presentation being very misleading, the President did not destroy his own strategy with bad discipline.
He largely avoided getting involved in grumpy confrontations with journalists and left the meeting after just a few questions. So if your return to the podium is a political tactic rather than a genuine effort to shift your focus to a virus you’ve minimized and mismanaged, it may have at least done a minimum of good in the eyes of your campaign team.
Launching Trump’s law and order to the suburbs
Another aspect of the president’s remodeled electoral strategy was unveiled last Wednesday, when he announced that it would “increase” federal law enforcement officers to Chicago and other cities, despite opposition from local and state officials.
The plan, another way Trump has used his executive power to meet personal political goals, solidifies his effort to portray Democrats as weak against crime and create an image of a nation besieged by radical, anarchist and staggering elements under what does it say. They are liberal efforts to destroy the police. The move follows the dispatch of federal officials to Portland, Oregon, who have been seen arresting protesters while wearing camouflage uniforms and without identifying their name and rank. Critics have warned that the President is indulging authoritarian tendencies and promoting a law and order crisis to discredit the Black Lives Matter protests.
“We will work every day to restore public safety, protect the children of our nation, and bring violent perpetrators to justice,” Trump said. “We have been doing it and you have been seeing what is happening across the country.”
“We have just started this process and, frankly, we have no choice but to get involved,” the president said, announcing deployments for the FBI, the US Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
From Trump’s point of view, the effort makes political sense. While Democratic mayors and governors resist his pressure and say they will not accept Trump’s “troops” and “secret police” on their streets, he may accuse them of not taking the safety of Americans seriously. It’s a launch aimed directly at suburban voters who have drifted away from Republicans since the 2016 election. Trump has repeatedly touched on public policy issues, apparently designed to play on the fears of white voters, which Trump believes he sees as others as an enemy that threatens their vision of traditional American culture.
As a Trump campaign press release put it in an email on Wednesday: “Your family will not be safe at Biden’s America.”
“The way he treats people based on the color of their skin, their national origin, where they are from, is absolutely disgusting,” Biden said in a virtual town hall organized by the International Union of Service Employees.
“No sitting president has done this,” he said. “Never, never, never. No Republican president has done this. No Democratic president. We have had racists, and they have existed, who tried to be elected president; he is the first to do so.”
Trump intensifies confrontation with China
In another example of how Trump is using presidential power to push a campaign issue, the administration announced on Wednesday the closure of the Chinese consulate clash in Houston, Texas.
The State Department accused Beijing of engaging in massive illegal espionage and influence operations for years, but did not say whether there was an individual incident that triggered the movement.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been on a tour of Europe seeking to gain the support of the United States’ allies on a broad front against Beijing.
There is credible evidence to suggest that China has been stealing US intellectual property and has used its espionage services to try to infiltrate the establishments of the US government, military, science and intelligence.
But the new crackdown, which is accelerating a serious deterioration in ties between the established superpower and rising power, comes as the White House tries to escape China, the origin of the new coronavirus, to cover up Trump’s previous denials of that the pandemic would threaten the United States.
But just as he cannot control what happens next with the virus, Trump is now vulnerable, yet China could react to the closure of his Houston consulate. While attacking Beijing has long been a tactic in presidential campaigns, it is not clear that all voters welcome a new, epochal showdown with a powerful foreign rival, especially one exacerbated for personal political gain.
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