With a month until election day, how does a return play out for COVID-stricken Trump?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
With a month until election day, how does a return play out for COVID-stricken Trump?
President Donald Trump's blithe prediction in late February about the looming coronavirus menace became almost a de facto mission statement for his administration.
"It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear,'' he said from the White House.
Now, sadly, the recklessness of his own power-of-positive-thinking hucksterism has come home to roost — and with only 30 days left to salvage his reelection.
The president who downplayed the virus — and lied to the public about its dangers, as author Bob Woodward reported recently — now finds himself in its grip .
Much of the nation — including the many ardent never-Trumpers — are praying for his recovery. But will he politically recover in the frenzied homestretch?
It's hard to see how. The quarantine and recovery period will take him off the campaign trail and away from his beloved, maskless rallies for at least 14 days.
It will be extremely difficult for a confined Trump to dominate the news cycle with his daily, ominous warnings of fraudulent mail-in balloting, or attempts to scare women voters with talk about looters and antifa activists ransacking the suburbs.
It will be difficult for him to change the subject, a skill in which he has few rivals. The subject will be updates on his battle with the coronavirus — a subject that is his biggest political vulnerability.
Every update will remind the nation of a stubborn, deadly threat that has taken more than 208,000 lives .
Every update will serve as a reminder that Trump mocked mask-wearing, as recently as Tuesday's debate with former Vice President Joe Biden.
"I don’t wear masks like him,” he said of Biden during the debate. “Every time you see him, he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from them, and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”
Every update will be a reminder of Trump's foolish flirtation with bleach and ultraviolet remedies.
And, perhaps, even more troubling, every update will include updates on the condition of donors and officials who came into contact with Trump and his inner-circle . Trump, who spread the message of minimal threat, is now a potential spreader of the disease.
'Almost a gleefulness'
"There is almost a gleefulness among those who hate him most and a kind of shock by people who like him,'' said Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran Democratic consultant based in New York.
Summarizing the shock of his supporters who drew succor from his dismissive, everything-will-be-fine attitude, Sheinkopf said, "It doesn't compute. If this is a hoax, why is he sick? If he attended to it, why is the most powerful man in the world now ill?"
That image of impervious power, the President as strongman who could stare down the nation's enemies, who can singlehandedly defeat the entrenched swamp creatures, and who can restore the nation's greatness, will take the biggest hit, Sheinkopf said.
"[The] Superman image he projects is gone,'' said Shienkopf. "The kryptonite has knocked him down."
The development comes as a major blow to Republican consultants tasked with overseeing other candidates on the ballot with Trump on Nov. 3.
The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg last month threatened to put the coronavirus on the back burner of the campaign.
Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist from Texas, acknowledged the gravity of the political peril now facing Trump's reelection.
He said it's incumbent for the White House and Trump's campaign to be candid about everything about the case "even if it looks bad." That includes a timeline of events that explains "what they knew, when they knew it, what steps they took who else is at risk.
"This is a national crisis on some level so they have to communicate thorough and entirely accurate information,'' he said. "There is just so much at stake here.''
And, Mackowiak said a swift recovery will allow Trump to talk about COVID-19, his fight and convalescence in a "personal way."
"It will give him a chance to moderate his message on COVID because he has gone through it himself,'' he said.
A Trump conversion? His friend, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, took the threat seriously after surviving a touch-and-go battle with the disease in April. No one wants to see Trump, or his wife or anybody else endure that nightmare.
But people have started voting in parts of the country. Trump may reconsider his messaging but it may be too late to convince the public of his new-found sincerity.
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When Trump starts talking about the Squad, or the suburbs and low income housing, or the "Russian hoax" , between now and Nov 3, it's going to fall on deaf ears to everyone but his basest base.
People will be thinking of what a fool he was to let himself get the covid.
It sounds like you expect the President to make a swift and complete recovery?
That is only one possibility. The others are:
1) His recovery will be long enough to force Mike Pence to carry the ball.
2) The remote chance that his case is fatal
For the time being all three options present a problem for the left - The nation will rally around the President.
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The majority hope for his swift recovery but they are not going to "rally" around this incompetent moron whose actions and carelessness put his own life and others at risk. Lying about the virus, hiding the truth early on, down playing the threat and ridiculing mask wearing will not be forgotten by the majority simply because he got sick.
Have you seen the new IBD/TIPP Poll?
“The majority hope for his swift recovery”
and their are some sick, pathetic pieces of shit that hopes he dies.
natural selection. survival of the fittest. go science go.
Trump supporters say polls are useless/biased/inaccurate, they always bring up how wrong the 2016 polls were wrong, so why are you touting this poll...why the change of attitude.
Do you think it's an outlier?
How many genders are there?
You really made me laugh, Vic. For weeks now the Trump supporters have been razzing the Biden supporters with reminders of the polls putting Clinton ahead in 2016, saying that's how inaccurate polls are, and no way can polls be considered reliable, and you wave that IBD/TIPP poll around like a flag.
I'm so glad. Always keep your sense of humor.
I have and even in that conservative biased online poll Biden is leading.
So I say again, the majority of Americans are not rallying around this incompetent buffoon in the white house. Rational patriotic Americans are rejecting Trumpism and voting to build back better with Biden. Some will continue to support the loser dishonest Donald, but the majority are not fooled by the conman-in-chief.
It has been announced that perennial Trump bootlicker Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has the coronavirus, joining the growing group of afflicted GOP officials announced in the past few days.
I'll bet that now that Trump got the virus, and many GOP officials have been getting it, they'll come up with a concept that getting the virus is like wearing a Badge of Honour. (Actually, since it will be American, it will be a Badge of Honor).