Trump’s leadership tested in time of fear
First came the coronavirus, then unrest over racial injustice
Not long after noon Feb. 6, President Donald Trump strode into the elegant East Room of the White House. The night before, his impeachment trial had ended with acquittal in the Republican-controlled Senate. It was time to gloat and settle scores.
“It was evil,” Trump said of the attempt to end his presidency. “It was corrupt. It was dirty cops. It was leakers and liars.”
It was also soon forgotten. On Feb. 6, in California, a 57-year-old woman was found dead in her home of natural causes then unknown. When her autopsy report came out, officials said her death had been the first from COVID19 in the U.S.
The “invisible enemy” was on the move. And civil unrest over racial injustice would soon claw at the country. If that were not enough, there came a fresh round of angst over Russia, and America would ask whether Trump had the backs of troops targeted by Russian bounties in Afghanistan.
These are times of pain, mass death, fear and deprivation, and the Trump show may be losing its allure, exposing the empty space once filled by the empathy and seriousness of presidents leading in a crisis.
Bluster isn’t beating the virus; belligerence isn’t calming a restive nation.
Victory lap
On Feb. 5 in the White House residence, Trump had watched all the Republican senators, save Mitt Romney of Utah, dutifully vote to acquit, ending the third impeachment trial in U.S. history.
His rambling, angry, 62-minute remarks the next day were meant to air out grievances and unofficially launch Trump’s reelection bid — with the crucible of impeachment behind him, his so-so approval ratings unharmed, Republicans unified and the economy roaring.
The longest day
Trump’s whirlwind trip to India was meant to be a celebration and in some ways was. He addressed a rally crowd of 100,000 and visited the Taj Mahal.
But in a quick talk to business people at the U.S. ambassador’s residence, he felt compelled to address the virus, which had begun rattling the foundation for his argument for another four years in office: the economy.
Fighting jet lag and anxiety about a dive in the stock market, Trump was up much of the previous night on the phone with advisers, peppering them with questions about the potential economic fallout of the outbreak, according to the officials who spoke with the Associated Press.
“We lost almost 1,000 points yesterday on the market, and that’s something,” Trump told the two dozen or so business leaders. “Things like that happen where — and you have it in your business all the time — it had nothing to do with you; it’s an outside source that nobody would have ever predicted.”
The virus was “a problem that’s going to go away,” he said. “Our country is under control.”
But the markets fell again the next day, creating their biggest two-day slide in four years. When Trump boarded Air Force One well after sundown in India, he was in a rage about the virus and his inability to slow the market tumble with reassuring words, according to the officials.
Trump’s assumption he would be running on the back of a strong economy against a socialist had been flipped on its head.
Coronavirus cases were about to soar.
The bunker
The chants could be heard inside the White House residence.
George Floyd, a Black man, had died under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer, igniting several nights of protests in the Twin Cities. Trump had said little about the death but was quick to denounce the violence that accompanied some of the demonstrations. “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” he tweeted, a threat flagged by the social media company and pilloried by Democrats because it reprised the language of a racist Miami police chief in the 1960s.
On May 29, the protests reached Trump’s front yard.
Thousands of people descended on Lafayette Square, clashing with law enforcement and overwhelming the security perimeter hastily set up just a few hundred yards from the front fencing of the White House. The size and energy of the protest had caught the Secret Service off guard and Trump, along with members of his immediate family, were rushed to an underground bunker, usually used to protect presidents during possible terrorist attacks.
The president’s tweeting continued, threatening a further crackdown against the protests, which he depicted as unlawful even though the vast majority were peaceful. When the bunker story became public, Trump reacted in a rage, screaming at aides to find the leaker, whom he deemed a traitor, and angry that it made him look weak, according to the officials. In the days that followed, Trump argued unconvincingly that he was only in the bunker to inspect it.
It was that anger — and a reflexive desire to align himself with law enforcement even when polling indicated widespread support for the protests — that led Trump to make one of the defining decisions of his term. He authorized the clearing of the square so he could walk across to the nearby “Church of the Presidents,” which was damaged during the protests, and hold up a Bible.
The photo op went terribly wrong. Democrats likened it to the actions of an authoritarian, while Republicans dissociated themselves from the spectacle. Aides cast blame on each other and even Trump privately admitted that he did not expect the fierce blowback.
Trump’s instinct, his ability to read a moment, had long been his strength as a politician. But from the bunker to the church to his increasingly lonely defense of Confederate monuments, he appeared out of step even with many Republicans on matters of race and in denial about the ravages of COVID-19.