Trump Seeks Revival After Pandemic Undercuts Bid for Second Term

(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump’s re-nomination for president this week was supposed to be the celebration of what he considers a storybook political career.

With a booming U.S. economy at his back, the president would bask in the adulation of thousands of supporters at the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, as he contemplated a glide path to re-election.

But that wasn’t how things looked at a meeting in late May, when Trump was presented with poll numbers showing Democratic rival Joe Biden had the edge, according to people familiar with the meeting. Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania -- the “blue wall” that Trump toppled to win in 2016 -- had Biden looking strong. The former vice president was even up in Florida, as close to a must-win as there is on the map for Trump.

A politician known for bluster and bravado, Trump showed a glimmer of recognition of his own political mortality, assessing his fortunes with an expletive.

Between the dream and the reality came coronavirus, which has come to define Trump for many voters better than any political strategist ever could. Instead of the raucous party he expected, Trump will appear before a crowd of only a few hundred socially distant Republican delegates gathered Monday to formally nominate him. The diminished event is practically its own metaphor for the toll the pandemic has taken on the U.S., where more than 176,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 since February, and on Trump’s political standing.

“Without the plague from China, this thing was over,” Trump lamented in a speech Friday to the Council for National Policy, a conservative group. “We were sailing.”

For the past three years, Trump relied on the strength of the U.S. economy to paper over any unease voters may have felt about the tumult in his administration. For the past three months, the White House has performed little more than damage control in the face of the virus.

The outlook was so bad at one point that Trump told Brad Parscale, his former campaign manager, that he would sue him, according to people familiar with the matter. Consulting firms connected to Parscale have made millions of dollars from Trump’s campaigns, and the president asked his son Eric and son-in-law Jared Kushner to review those expenditures, according to one of the people. They found no wrongdoing.

Trump personally asked Parscale’s replacement, Bill Stepien, to keep Parscale in a key role in the campaign after he was demoted, two people familiar with the situation said.

One person said Trump was being sarcastic when he threatened to sue Parscale. Others didn’t think so.

After the meeting in May, the recriminations that mark a faltering political campaign began to seep in. Trump changed convention venues before eventually abandoning his hopes for a large, in-person event. A Tulsa rally in June meant to be his resurrection became instead a humbling reality check when the arena wound up half-empty.

One person close to the campaign said that in July, coronavirus was the real fight, and it didn’t seem at the time like Trump and his top political and policy advisers had a plan to win it.

Consumed With Enemies

The president channeled the anxieties and concerns of Rust Belt working class White voters into victory in 2016. But his combative first term, beset by investigations of his campaign’s connections to Russia and his conduct in Ukraine, has left Trump consumed with his political enemies even as the nation reels from the coronavirus outbreak.

Meanwhile, the racial appeals to White voters that helped him win in 2016 seem to be falling flat or backfiring in 2020. Trump’s threats to turn the military on people protesting police brutality and his promises to keep low-income housing out of America’s suburbs so far haven’t helped him in polls and may be contributing to a sense he considers the virus a low priority.

More than half of Americans -- 54% -- said the federal government isn’t taking the outbreak seriously in a Fox News poll. Seven in 10 described the condition of the country as fair or poor.

And polls suggest many voters in key states who supported Trump in 2016 are abandoning him for Biden.

Just 26% of Americans now describe things as going well, according to a CBS News poll taken before the conventions began. Some 46% of Americans say they think the pandemic response will get better if Biden is elected, versus just 24% who say it will get worse, according to a Washington Post-ABC News survey.

Biden has zeroed in on the public’s low opinion of Trump’s response to the virus.

“Our current president has failed in his most basic duty to this nation,” Biden said in his nomination acceptance speech on Thursday, squarely blaming Trump for the sickness, deaths and economic damage in the U.S. during the pandemic.

“He failed to protect us,” Biden said. “He failed to protect America.”

Daily News Conferences

Trump’s remarks Friday suggest he’s aware of the political jeopardy he faces absent a humming economy. He’s begun meeting almost daily with Stepien, as well as campaign communications director Jason Miller, who’s traveling more regularly with Trump as the team seeks to fine-tune his message.

There have been internal debates over whether Trump is better served traveling the country or staying put in Washington, where he can demonstrate focus on the virus. Some have argued that the only path to victory is being on the road, just the way Trump won in 2016.

Others -- including Stepien and Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner -- argued that it’s more advantageous for Trump to stay at the White House and look presidential, with events in the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room and the Rose Garden. Biden wasn’t campaigning, they observed -- why should Trump?

The president has wound up doing both. Trump resumed near-daily White House news conferences, as he and his advisers bet that more public exposure, not less, would bolster his political standing. He’s also begun holding small rallies at airport hangars across the country, allowing Trump do what he loves most -- riff about himself and his accomplishments in front of crowds shouting their support.

Trump recently has recovered modestly in polls from a nearly 10-point deficit in late June, but still trails Biden by more than 7 percentage points on average, according to RealClearPolitics.

Republicans will look to further narrow that deficit with a convention designed to recapture the populist spirit that Trump rode to the White House in 2016. Rather than the usual collection of party luminaries and past leaders -- many of whom seem reluctant to appear alongside the president -- aides say the convention will feature real people whose lives have been positively impacted by the president’s policies.

‘Different Side’ of Trump

The event is intended to show “a different side of President Trump that a lot of people don’t really see” including “untold stories” from across the country, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said.

“Ours is going to be a very uplifting, optimistic, forward looking convention,” White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said Friday. “Part progress report of the first four years, first 47 months of Donald Trump’s presidency versus the 47 years of Joe Biden in Washington, and the the vision piece: what will you be building with four more years, what will you be tackling, what do we hope to do with Congress.”

Late Sunday, Conway announced she would leave the administration at the end of the month, citing family considerations, though for now she still plans to speak at the convention, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Other elements of the convention schedule suggest that the president will also revert to more familiar methods for shoring up political support. A week of flag-draped programming is designed to paint Trump as the sole protector of American greatness, and his opponent as a senile puppet of leftist anarchists looking to destroy cherished institutions.

Speakers include a Kentucky Trump supporter who sued media organizations for libel after he was inaccurately portrayed as harassing a Native American group on the National Mall and a St. Louis couple who faced charges from a local prosecutor after pointing guns at unarmed Black Lives Matter protesters in their neighborhood.

The lineup suggests Republicans are trying to appeal to “White people who are aggrieved” with speakers who “had moments in which they embodied a sense among Whites that they are under siege and unfairly treated and misunderstood and insulted,” said William Howell, a professor of American politics at the University of Chicago.

Cameo Appearances

Trump is expected to make his presence felt each night of the convention with cameo appearances. Vice President Mike Pence will speak from Fort McHenry in Maryland, where the “Star Spangled Banner” was penned. First Lady Melania Trump will address the nation from the newly renovated Rose Garden.

Yet, despite promising more spectacle and excitement than last week’s Democratic convention, this may be Trump’s toughest sales pitch yet.

“The fundamentals don’t look good for him -- the combination of the pandemic and how it’s been handled, the economic fallout, have taken away his best arguments for re-election,” said Howell, the author of “Presidents, Populism and the Crisis of Democracy.”

The president and his advisers argue that pollsters and commentators are discounting the enthusiasm and loyalty he has inspired among his base. Trump has marveled at anecdotal indicators that he enjoys more support than polls reflect -- a large boat parade in his honor in Clearwater, Florida, earlier this month, as well as crowds of fans lining motorcade routes and cramming airport tarmacs as he travels across the country.

And polls have shown far more dedication to their candidate among Trump supporters than among voters for Biden.

Only 29% of Biden supporters surveyed in the CBS News poll said the main reason they were casting their ballot was because they liked the former vice president. That’s compared to 68% of Trump voters who say their top reason for supporting the president’s re-election is their affinity for him.

But the president might not find many Americans left to win over. A staggering 96% of voters -- and 95% of self-identified independents -- surveyed by CBS News said they had totally decided on who to vote for or were unlikely to change their mind. Just 3% of respondents said they would consider changing their vote.

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