Trump cancels the GOP convention events planned for Florida.
Virus cases took off in Jacksonville and around the region
Bowing to threats posed by the coronavirus, President Donald Trump reversed course Thursday and canceled the portion of the Republican National Convention to be held in Jacksonville, Fla., just weeks after he moved the event from North Carolina because state officials wanted the party to take health precautions there.
The surprise announcement threw one of the tent-pole moments of Trump’s re-election effort into limbo, with the president describing in vague terms how the Republicans would hold his renomination in North Carolina and do “other things with tele-rallies and online.”
While Trump has spent weeks urging Florida and other states to reopen their economies and return to life as normal, virus cases have surged in Jacksonville and across the region. The president had insisted on moving ahead with the event until Thursday.
“We won’t do a big, crowded convention per se — it’s not the right time for that,” Trump said during a short news conference in the White House briefing room.
The Jacksonville convention host committee had about $6 million in various accounts and had spent some of that money already. It had $20 million in commitments that were still firm Tuesday, according to two officials involved in the fundraising. On Wednesday, they were still assessing
“I said, ‘There’s nothing more important in our country than keeping our people safe.’ I just felt it was wrong to have people going to what turned out to be a hot spot.” President Donald Trump
whether donors would be able to get their money back but assumed that they would not be able to do so in full.
Trump said his political advisers had tried to tell him they could make the convention work in Jacksonville, noting the “enthusiasm” that was building.
But the president tried to portray himself as more concerned about public health. “I said, ‘There’s nothing more important in our country than keeping our people safe,’” he said of conversations with advisers. “I just felt it was wrong to have people going to what turned out to be a hot spot.”
As coronavirus cases surged, voters, donors and elected officials from both parties expressed skepticism about holding a big gathering just several weeks away. A Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday showed that 62 percent of the state’s voters thought the convention would be unsafe to hold.
In Florida, there were 10,239 new cases Thursday. There were a reported 173 deaths, a record number.
Trump said the decision to cancel the event was designed for “safety” and that the news media would have faulted him if he had continued. He said the party might hold rallies that people could join by telephone or video, adding that the actual work of the convention — approving the platform, for instance — would take place in Charlotte, the original site of the gathering.
The decision came after the president held conversations with his new campaign manager, Bill Stepien, and Republican National Committee chairwoma Ronna McDaniel, according to people familiar with the discussions.