President Trump is downplaying the sharp rise in coronavirus infections in the final sprint to Election Day, staking his campaign on the notion that voters have pandemic fatigue and are ready to move on.
“Covid, Covid, Covid is the unified chant of the Fake News Lamestream Media. They will talk about nothing else until November 4th,” Trump tweeted this week. The president has voiced variations of this message on social media and at campaign rallies to dismiss the coronavirus as an overblown crisis, pointing to lower COVID-19 death rates this fall compared to infection spikes that struck earlier this year as evidence the worst of the pandemic has passed.
With people increasingly leery of lockdowns and tired of quarantining, Trump’s optimistic pitch cannot be dismissed out of hand, Republican strategists in Washington and across Midwestern battleground states said. But they contend Joe Biden still has the upper hand on coronavirus messaging. His sober treatment of the pandemic as an ongoing challenge and the No. 1 domestic threat facing the United States is more in line with where voters are on the issue.
“I’m not sure Trump hits the notes the right way, but there is no doubt there are folks who want things back to normal and are over all of it,” a Republican operative in Iowa said Thursday. “I think if Trump understood how to properly talk about masks and science, he could pull this message off much better.”
A second Republican operative in Michigan, another competitive Midwestern battleground, said Trump’s argument that people have to learn how to live with the coronavirus and resume normal life might be “a plus” politically if voters approved of how he has handled the pandemic and believed “he had any sort of plan.”
Voters give Trump high marks on the economy, and, on Thursday, he was touting a fresh report showing record economic growth in the third quarter. But the president’s approval for his handling of the coronavirus is only 40.2% in the RealClearPolitics average.
Biden regularly outpaces Trump in surveys on the question of who would do a better job managing the pandemic. In the campaign’s closing days, the former vice president is not deviating from his hyperfocus on the coronavirus. On Thursday, he issued a statement marking confirmation of more than 200,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Pennsylvania. On the trail in Florida, Biden said Trump has “given up” trying to defeat the virus.
The Republican National Committee is mocking the Democratic nominee for delivering a “doom and gloom” message. Trump supporters are highlighting the president’s packed campaign rallies as positive signs of his political strength overall — and that voters find his coronavirus rhetoric appealing. Meanwhile, claim Trump and his supporters, Biden’s modest campaign events are proof that his approach is falling flat.
Priorities USA, the Biden campaign’s designated super PAC, said polling it has conducted has shown voters broadly disapprove of Trump’s decision to hold crowded campaign rallies in the midst of a pandemic.
“Bad public health policy is bad politics, and voters are on to this,” said Guy Cecil, chairman of Priorities USA. “They understand that coronavirus cases are rising, they hold the president responsible for it, and they are not reacting well to the fact that he is holding mass rallies where most of the people are not wearing masks, where no one is social distancing.”
Trump contracted the coronavirus in late September. He returned to the campaign trail about 10 days later, crediting his recovery at least partly to new therapeutic medicine, the development of which his administration helped fund and put on a fast track for availability through a program dubbed “Operation Warp Speed.” Five days before Election Day, he trails Biden in most public opinion polls but remains within striking distance.
To put Trump in a better position to hold off Biden, Republican insiders were hopeful the spread of the coronavirus might recede close to Election Day or that a vaccine might be announced. Some GOP strategists believe that is what the president needed to mitigate what they believe are self-inflicted wounds to his campaign stemming from a cavalier attitude toward the pandemic, a top issue even though COVID-19 mortality rates have declined.
None of that happened, nor did Trump alter his approach once infection rates started going back up. It could cost him, some Republicans say.
“The thing about elections is they don’t always get to be about what we want them to be about from the standpoint of candidate and team,” said Nick Everhart, a Republican strategist in Ohio. “In the case of the 2020 presidential race, the president is learning the hard way that even he cannot simply will attention away from a pandemic that’s the center of everything in the world right now.”
