Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Citing risk, Trump calls off 4-night GOP event in Florida
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday scrapped plans for a four-night Republican National Convention celebration in Florida that had been set to draw more than 10,000 people to a pandemic hot spot to mark his renomination.
Trump already had moved the convention’s public events out of North Carolina because of virus concerns. But the spiking virus shifted south, too, and the planned gathering in Jacksonville increasingly appeared to be both a health and political risk.
Trump and his advisers feared that going forward with big parties and “infomercial” programming in Florida would ultimately backfire on the president.
“It’s a different world, and it will be for a little while,” Trump said, explaining his decision at a White House coronavirus briefing. “To have a big convention is not the right time.”
A small subset of GOP delegates will still formally
renominate Trump on Aug. 24 in Charlotte, N.C., at an event scheduled to last just four hours.
Trump had decided last month to shift the ceremonial portions of the GOP convention to Florida because of a dispute with North Carolina’s Democratic leaders over holding an indoor gathering with throngs of supporters.
But his plans for a gathering in Florida starting shrinking almost as quickly as the move was announced, as virus cases spiked in the state and other parts of the country. Florida officials reported 173 new virus deaths Thursday, a daily high that raises the overall number to more than 5,500.
California had a record 157 new deaths, raising its toll to 8,027. An additional 89 deaths in Arizona pushed its total to 3,000, with over 1,000 deaths reported in the past 15 days.
Trump said he plans to deliver his nomination acceptance speech in an alternative form still to be determined — perhaps online. Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said the campaign still will “provide exciting, informative, and enthusiastic programming, so Republicans can celebrate the renomination of President Trump and Vice President [Mike] Pence.”
Trump said thousands of his supporters and delegates wanted to attend the events in Florida, but “I just felt it was wrong” to gather them in a virus hot spot. Some of them would have faced quarantine requirements when they returned to their home states from the convention.
“We didn’t want to take any chances,” he added. “We have to be vigilant. We have to be careful, and we have to set an example.”
DEMOCRATS VIRTUAL
Democrats will hold an almost entirely virtual convention Aug. 17-20 in Milwaukee using live broadcasts and online streaming, according to party officials. Joe Biden plans to accept the presidential nomination in person, but it remains to be seen whether there will be a significant in-person audience.
In recent weeks, Trump aides and allies have encouraged the president to consider calling off the convention, arguing it was not worth going forward with the event if the focus would be on the pandemic. Trump acknowledged that consideration, saying, “I could see the media saying, ‘Oh, this is very unsafe.’”
After a three-month hiatus, Trump has stepped back to the forefront of the government’s handling of the virus with regular briefings.
Trump said he did not cancel the convention events at the request of local officials, but the Jacksonville City Council was set to meet today to discuss safety concerns around the gathering.
Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party, said he appreciated Trump “putting health and public safety first.”
“I know this was a difficult decision and just demonstrates and reaffirms once again his commitment to Jacksonville, the state of Florida and the people of the United States of America,” he said. “I’m grateful for him and his leadership, and this was the right way to move forward.”
Joe Gruters, current chairman of the Florida Republican Party and a state senator from Sarasota, called it a “selfless move.”
“Having our home-state candidate was going to be a really big deal for Florida, but listen, he had it right,” Gruters said. “At the end of the day, it’s about safety.”
More than 10,000 people were expected in Jacksonville — already a fraction of the number that would typically attend a nominating convention. Only 336 delegates will be allowed to participate in Charlotte under extraordinary procedures approved last month by the Republican National Committee. The balance of the more than 2,500 delegates will vote by proxy.
Cory Burkarth, a spokesman for the city of Charlotte, said Thursday, “We have an agreement in place with the Republican National Committee to host a substantially scaled down business meeting and that is what we are planning to do.”
4 MILLION INFECTIONS
Meanwhile, testing shortcomings are making it more difficult to get a clear picture about the scope of the pandemic in the U.S., as case counts in some hot spots wane but health officials warn that new infections may be significantly undercounted.
The outbreak remains on a troubling trajectory. The U.S. topped 4 million infections on Thursday, and deaths continue to hit records in some states.
A definitive picture of the virus spread in the U.S. remains elusive. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary at the Health and Human Services Department and the country’s testing czar, told Fox News on Thursday that while the nation is officially logging about 67,000 new cases a day, the reality is more likely about 200,000.
That’s twice the level of 100,000 that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious-disease expert, had earlier this month warned senators the country could reach.
Giroir even suggested another shutdown might be necessary. He noted that nearly universal mask-wearing, sharp restrictions on restaurant occupancy and shutting down bars were nearly as effective in controlling the virus as another shutdown of all nonessential businesses.
“Now, if you don’t do that, and people don’t achieve those goals, particularly mask-wearing, there may be no alternative,” Giroir said on MSNBC.
According to an analysis by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, the majority of states qualify as hot spots — about 36, accounting for more than 70% of the country’s population. The assessment is based on trends in case increases, positivity rates and new daily cases per 1 million population.
HOPE FOR STABILIZATION
Still, there’s some cause for cautious optimism that outbreaks in some states may be stabilizing.
Arizona reported a slowing rate of increase of new cases on Thursday, and the rate at which tests returned positive results dropped to 26.7% from 30.5% on Wednesday.
Trump resumed his coronavirus briefings solo on Tuesday with a markedly different tone from earlier. “It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better,” Trump said.
It’s a perspective shared by Manisha Juthani, an infectious-disease specialist at Yale School of Medicine.
“Things will get worse before they start getting better,” Juthani said Thursday. “Some areas are not hit very hard, while some are approaching catastrophic levels,” she said of hot-spot states like California, Texas and Florida.
Quest Diagnostics Inc.’s chief executive, Steve Rusckowski, said Thursday that demand for the screenings has “soared” in recent weeks. However that’s led to lengthy turnaround times, driving down the effectiveness of testing in curbing the spread.
Even for high-priority patients, results now take about two days. The lab giant has done about 20% of the country’s tests. It’s up to 130,000 diagnostic screenings a day and expects to reach 150,000 in the coming weeks, he said.
While there have been many improvements since March, the surges in new cases since the Memorial Day holiday weekend show “clearly we are going in the wrong direction,” said Andrew Badley, head of Mayo Clinic’s Covid Research Task Force. “We still have major challenges ahead,” Badley said. Information for this article was contributed by Zeke Miller, Christopher Rugaber, Brendan Farrington, Matt Sedensky, Michelle Liu, Lindsay Whitehurst and Rebecca Santana of The Associated Press; and by Emma Court and Olivia Raimonde of Bloomberg News.