On the day that America reached a world record 2m coronavirus infections, Donald Trump announced a campaign rally and his deputy, Mike Pence, posted (then deleted) a tweet of campaign staff gathered indoors without face masks or physical distancing.
Wednesday’s disconnect appeared to confirm that the US president, obsessed with rebuilding the economy and winning re-election, is now taking a “Pandemic? What pandemic?” approach, even as Covid-19 cases rise in 21 states and his administration fails to bring the crisis under control.
For critics of a White House that has long dabbled in “alternative facts”, it is the most audacious attempt yet to deploy an Orwellian doublethink where two plus two equals five.
“While states across the country are recording record high new coronavirus infections, Trump has simply given up on fighting the virus,” said Zac Petkanas, coronavirus war room director for the healthcare campaign group Protect Our Care. “Not only are nearly a thousand people still dying every day because of Trump’s failed leadership, but he’s making things worse.
“He’s continued to urge states to reopen before they’re ready, drastically scaled down the coronavirus taskforce, is not ramping up the necessary testing and is now even scheduling in-person campaign rallies – all but making sure that tens of thousands needlessly die and millions remain out of work.”
From this perspective, Trump’s pandemic denialism has come full circle. He infamously downplayed the threat at the start of the year, promising in February that the number of cases “within a couple days is going to be down close to zero” while failing to adequately prepare testing and protective equipment. He then reversed course and declared a national emergency.
April was dominated by daily coronavirus taskforce briefings at the White House as the president cancelled campaign rallies and declared himself a “wartime president”. But Trump allowed federal physical distancing guidelines to expire at the end of that month, urged state governors to end lockdowns and lambasted those who exercised caution.
The briefings abruptly stopped and the taskforce now meets only twice a week rather than daily, with Trump seldom present. Dr Anthony Fauci, the top infectious diseases expert who became such a household name that he was played by Brad Pitt on Saturday Night Live, made just four cable TV appearances in May, according to the Politico website. Fauci this week described Covid-19 as his “worst nightmare – and it isn’t over yet”.
But Trump’s tunnel vision is now focused on repairing the economic damage caused by the virus and projecting a return to normality. When Trump does address the pandemic, he seems to have declared victory. “We were able to close our country, save millions of lives, open,” he said at the White House last week. “And now the trajectory is great.”
The president is also intent on returning to the campaign trail. After a three-month hiatus, he will hold a rally on 20 June in Tulsa, which is experiencing a surge of Covid-19 cases, in Oklahoma, and he has promised more in Florida, Arizona, Texas and North Carolina – all of which are seeing sharp upticks. August’s Republican National Convention has also moved to Jacksonville, Florida, with physical distancing expected to be a low priority.
Media reports suggest that White House officials believe they have been given “cover” by this month’s nationwide anti-racism protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Those who backed the demonstrations despite their inherent health risks, the argument goes, would be hypocrites if they objected to rallies or reopenings.
The campaign relaunch could also throw down the gauntlet to Trump’s election rival, Joe Biden, who is beating the president comprehensively in several opinion polls. A Trump rally with a cheering crowd eschewing face masks, and a packed convention crowning him as the Republican nominee, could be used to draw a striking contrast in optics with the mask-wearing, basement-bound Biden, selling the incumbent as a happy warrior.
Lanhee Chen, who was policy director for Republican Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, said: “It’s on message for Trump and his team to portray Trump as someone who is not afraid of anything, whether it’s coronavirus or public opinion maybe suggesting he should wait longer. It fits with their theme and their message.”
Chen, a fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, added: “I do think it puts pressure on Biden and his team to the degree that Biden continues to remain hunkered down in his basement in Delaware. At some point he’s going to have to come out and I think what the Trump team is hoping to do is to basically force him out before he’s ready to.
“As a campaign strategy, I think it’s a pretty effective one. Biden could respond and they could start holding their own events and it wouldn’t be as effective for Trump. But I fully understand and get the strategy they’re pursuing.”
Yet the pandemic death toll is now above 110,000, higher than Trump predicted, and more than a dozen states are recording their highest averages of new cases since it began. Arizona reported a 49% increase in hospitalizations since Memorial Day. Texas, which is into the third phase of reopening, saw a 36% increase in new cases over the same period, with a record high of hospitalizations as of Tuesday afternoon.
Yet with the exception of Utah and Oregon, states are forging ahead with reopening as governors show little appetite for a second lockdown that would incur Trump’s wrath. Commentators warn that, even as the virus kills up to a thousand Americans a day, the president has reverted to his first instinct of trying to wish it away.
Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: “That’s been his strategy from the beginning. That’s how we got into this cluster fuck in the first place. He’s been wishing it away since his intelligence community has been telling him this would be a problem months ago, which is why the country wasn’t prepared, mixed messages were sent and it’s now a red or blue issue to wear a mask and do things that are just socially responsible for your health and the people around you.
“That’s Donald Trump’s fault because he did not lead on this issue and was too busy running around calling it a hoax and blaming everything under the sun instead of taking responsibility for leading us through this challenge.”
Setmayer, host of the Honestly Speaking with Tara Setmayer podcast, added: “It’s terribly irresponsible for the president of the United States to start having rallies where people wear it as a badge of valor not to wear a mask.”
This week the New York Times reported that there seems to be a “tacit agreement” between the parties in Washington to move on to other business, with Democrats no longer stressing the need for physical distancing. But Moe Vela, a former senior adviser to Biden at the White House, vehemently criticized Trump’s return to rallies.
“I think it’s the most selfish, egotistical and arrogant exercise anybody could engage in in the next 30 to 60 days,” he said.
