While President Trump plays down the threat from a novel coronavirus that has killed 26 people in the United States, fears are mounting among key allies that this could turn out to be the sort of unanticipated black swan event that derails his reelection.
On Monday, U.S. stocks fell more than 7% in the worst day of trading since 2008, threatening to undermine one of Trump’s key campaign promises — that voters’ 401(k) investments are safe with him.
A week of spiraling shocks has the White House looking for plans to immunize the economy and a 2020 campaign wondering how to respond to a threat that emerged from nowhere.
“A week ago, everyone was pretty sanguine. There were actually people saying this could be good for the Trump agenda,” said a senior administration official.
“Since then, the balance of risk and reward has shifted. The optimistic view is not being heard quite so much when you have plague ships docking.”
A cruise ship isolated off the coast of California docked in Oakland on Monday. Its 2,421 passengers and 1,113 crew members will be quarantined for 14 days after 21 people were found to have the virus.
The slow progress of the Grand Princess into Oakland was shown on television screens aboard Air Force One as the president returned from a weekend at Mar-a-Lago, his club in Palm Beach, Florida.
The episode illustrates how the president is attempting to work out his messaging for the virus, painting it as a foreign threat.
On Friday, during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Trump said he would have the vessel stay at sea.
“I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault,” he said.
The president has three times in the past 11 days described the coronavirus as a “foreign outbreak.”
That stance was developed as aides briefed that the coronavirus might offer an opportunity for Trump to renew his economic nationalist credentials and argue that companies that brought manufacturing back from China, where the COVID-19 disease originated, would weather the crisis better than others that remained reliant on the Asian country.
Since then, 27 states have reported cases of the disease, the administration has been accused of bungling the provision of testing kits, and markets have spent a fortnight in turmoil.
If these were not enough to drive the message home, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida announced he was self-quarantining after coming into contact with an infected person at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. He made the announcement on Twitter soon after hitching a ride back with Trump aboard Air Force One.
Administration officials have privately expressed irritation that Trump’s attempts to play down the risk have distracted from the work done by Vice President Mike Pence and his coronavirus task force in encouraging people to self-isolate if sick.
On Monday, for example, the White House said it was “business as usual” just after the 73-year-old president plunged his arm into a waiting crowd at Orlando’s airport to shake well-wishers by the hand in Florida.
“I think that the reaction from the administration have been good so far, even if the POTUS messages have been a bit muddled (self-obsessed),” said a senior administration official via text message, who pointed out that Pence had been getting good reviews from industry figures and that job numbers and economic fundamentals remained sound.
A spokesman for the Trump campaign declined to talk about any changes to strategy or messaging.
Tim Murtaugh, communications director, also played down that Trump has no campaign rallies scheduled amid speculation they are being suspended to account for the coronavirus.
“The campaign is proceeding as normal,” he said. “We announce rallies when they are ready to be announced.”
The damage so far is not fatal to Trump, and there is still time for the markets to come back into line, according to Jeanne Zaino, professor of political science at Iona College, which is closed for a fortnight because of a local case in upstate New York.
But the outbreak is a major test for a president who has in the past governed largely for his base. And therein lies a message for his campaign.
“He needs to show empathy and govern for the whole country, and I don’t think that comes naturally to him,” she said. “People have to believe that he’s telling the truth.”
