Just plain stupid...

Trump tries to claw back control as coronavirus pandemic threatens his reelection

In a series of tweets, Trump repeated his claim that the United States is “doing very well” combating the virus compared to “most other countries.”

By QUINT FORGEY

President Donald Trump is seeking to repair a damaging media narrative as coronavirus infections spiral back out of control just over 100 days before the presidential election.

Trump — whose poll numbers have suffered as he’s been hammered for the administration’s stammering response — is setting in motion a new White House communications effort around the Covid crisis and is trying to shift focus to crime in major American cities.

In a series of tweets Tuesday morning, Trump repeated his claim that the United States is “doing very well” combating the virus compared to “most other countries” — even as spiking caseloads put the U.S. far ahead of other industrialized nations — and touted the “Tremendous progress being made on Vaccines and Therapeutics” to treat the highly infectious disease.

The most notable addition to the president’s preferred social media feed was a black-and-white photo posted Monday afternoon, showing him modeling a face mask, a personal mitigation measure Trump had long been reluctant to model.

“There is nobody more Patriotic than me, your favorite President!” he wrote online.

The president seems poised to reprise those rosy sentiments Tuesday evening, when he is slated to resume his appearances at televised White House coronavirus press conferences.

Trump revealed Monday that he would return to the podium for a coronavirus briefing after a nearly three-month hiatus. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany is also scheduled to brief reporters in a separate news conference Tuesday morning.

This week has also seen a brief détente in the president’s feud with his own health officials, after the White House rebuked CDC guidance for reopening schools and waged a smear campaign against Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, in recent days.

Although Trump did deem the doctor to be “a little bit of an alarmist” during an interview Sunday in which he again downplayed the nature of the coronavirus threat, Fauci appeared optimistic Tuesday about the White House’s plans to restart its task force briefings. “I think if we do this and we do it right, it will be very informative for the American public,” he told NPR.

The apparent shift in the administration’s messaging comes as state and local leaders continue to wrestle with soaring Covid-19 caseloads exacerbated by rampant community spread, while Trump’s reelection team reckons with the latest public polling showing him trailing former Vice President Joe Biden less than four months from Election Day.

Amid the downturn in his political fortunes, Trump had been increasingly hesitant over the past months to engage on the subject of slowing the coronavirus’ spread, instead fixating almost single-mindedly on the need to reopen the national economy and the country’s places of learning.

The president's return to daily coronavirus briefings could signal a willingness to more fully address the public health challenges posed by the pandemic. But such a course correction would likely coincide with Trump’s new crusade against incidents of crime in urban centers governed by Democrats.

As an ambiguous mix of forces from the Department of Homeland Security bear down on Portland, Ore., Trump has warned he may deploy more federal agents to stamp out protests and violence in other cities, including Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Oakland and Philadelphia.

The president’s critics have condemned his threats as part of a broader bid to gin up his political base ahead of November, and Trump himself has explicitly linked the upcoming general election to his law enforcement crackdown.

“I'm going to do something, that I can tell you. Because … we're not going to let this happen in our country,” he told reporters Monday in the Oval Office, adding: “If Biden got in, that would be true for the country. The whole country would go to hell, and we’re not going to let it go to hell.”