Trump to renew public pandemic briefings
WASHINGTON — With the country setting records for new coronavirus cases, President Donald Trump is belatedly and begrudgingly returning the deadly pandemic to his public schedule after weeks of appearing desperate to talk about anything else.
He announced Monday that he would restart his regular briefings about the virus, probably Tuesday, three months after he stopped them following a backlash over his suggestion that injections of disinfectant could be used to kill the disease.
Republicans have been pushing for the administration to take a more visible role in battling the pandemic, fearing that the crisis will continue unabated and lead to a Democratic sweep in the November election. Several
have differed from the president in consistently urging people to wear masks and respect restrictions on public gatherings to slow the spread of the virus.
The decision to start holding briefings again reflects Trump’s scramble to reverse his slide in the polls, where he’s trailing by double digits to former Vice President Joe Biden, his likely Democratic opponent.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll released last week showed that 64 percent of Americans don’t trust what the president says about the pandemic.
Andrew Bates, a Biden spokesman, said Trump’s announcement shows “what he cares about most is not saving American lives, but getting more attention.”
“We’ve watched this exact scene from Donald Trump’s ongoing horror movie before when he hijacked the briefings and spread dangerous misinformation,” Bates said.
Trump rarely has discussed the virus in the last two months except to praise his administration’s response or say that he hasn’t gotten enough credit, and he’s acknowledged the continued threat only reluctantly.
“The coronavirus, in all fairness, that’s a problem,” he conceded in a call with supporters Sunday night. He also described the challenge in the past tense.
“We closed our country,” Trump said. “We saved millions of lives. We’re now open.”
Administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, describe Trump as bored with a virus that has upended life around the country, and he’s been focused on almost everything except the pandemic.
Last week, for example, he bragged about cutting government regulations while standing in front of an elaborate display of pickup trucks and posed with a stack of Goya products after the food company’s executive faced criticism for visiting the White House.
That strategy appears to have contributed to his plunging levels of public support.
“It’s really hard to distract people from a virus that’s killing hundreds of thousands and seems to be getting worse,” said Seth Masket, a political science professor at the University of Denver. “And it feels like this will only continue to get worse the longer he tries to talk about other things.”
One person who spoke earlier this month with Trump about the state of his re-election effort said they discussed messaging, polling and even specific campaign staffers, but the topic of the government’s handling of the pandemic never came up.
“He thinks there’s not much for him to do or say at this point,” the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private conversation. “His thinking is, it’s up to the governors at this point.”
David Polyansky, a Republican political consultant, said Trump has to target other topics when voters disapprove of how he’s handled the coronavirus.
“The fact of the matter is, he’s not in a position of strength to fight on that terrain,” he said. “He’s got to go to the higher ground to the issues that he can fight on.”
Polyansky noted that most polls show voters still favor Trump over Biden on economic issues, describing it as “a real opening and an opportunity.”