Trump’s original slogan, “Make America Great Again”. he was snappy enough to fit on a red baseball cap four years ago. He had run in 2020 on a “Keep America Great” platform. But his new slogan “We will go to size” next year shows how now he will have to sell the promise of a painful economic recovery – a case made even more difficult after his irregular management of the pandemic.
But the United States is not conducting the most per capita tests on coronavirus. More countries are conducting more tests of the United States than their populations, including Denmark, Italy and New Zealand.
Fauci’s testimony
Probably not coincidentally, Trump’s press conference and an announcement that the government would send $ 11 billion in funds already allocated to the States to increase testing came a day before the infectious disease trust officer, Dr. Anthony Fauci, appeared remotely in a Senate Audience. Fauci has not shied away from telling the truth about the quality of the test effort criticized by the administration, and the Democrats will pepper him with questions aimed at eliciting a harmful answer.
But not for the first time, the president trampled on his message with an ugly race controversy that also highlighted his frequent disdain for journalists.
He shot an Asian American journalist who asked him why he was turning a tragic moment into a global test competition.
“Maybe it’s a question you should ask China,” Trump told Weijia Jiang, White House reporter for CBS News, who was born in China but moved to the United States at the age of 2. Jiang appeared shocked by the apparent conflict of the president with his background race with China. Trump then stopped the event when another female correspondent, CNN Kaitlan Collins, who had referred to his colleague, tried to ask a question.
Even before that unpleasant moment, the Rose Garden event was already surreal, as reporters struggled to make their questions about muffled masks audible following the White House coronavirus epidemic, which graphically undermines Trump’s claims that the country is safe to open.
Trump’s benefits in testing, a practice he suggested last week wasn’t so important in controlling the virus, may also have been designed to dismiss the impression that he and helpers are benefiting from a test and tracking system. contacts he is still providing to the rest of the nation.
Trump’s low messaging expectations were just a turn of a typically casual aspect. By attacking China as a source of the virus, launching himself against former President Barack Obama, publicizing his frontier wall, remembering the roaring economy previously and claiming to have saved tens of thousands of lives, the President apparently offered a vision of the campaign strategy being retooled day by day.
But he offered his opponents an opening when he said in the opening remarks that in each generation and challenge, America has risen to the task.
“We met the moment and prevailed,” he said.
Trump later clarified that he meant that the United States had prevailed in the battle to improve tests – a distinction that would hardly stop his observation popping up in an advertising campaign that would likely accuse him of a moment of “mission accomplished”.
Trump accuses Obama of a “crime”
Trump has defied all expectations since he stepped off the golden escalator to Trump Tower in 2015 to launch the most extraordinary political career in modern history. It is too early to cancel it in November, also because many Democrats live in fear of the presidential campaign in scorched earth that is about to unleash. And the President enjoys formidable advantages in organizing the key states and funding the campaign over his alleged Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
His mood on Monday shows how he will use each lever of the presidency to ensure his political survival.
While more people died in America as a result of Covid-19 than in any other country and few states meet the White House guidelines on infections caused to safely reopen, Trump presented his emergency management as a famous victory.
“Thanks to the courage of our citizens and our aggressive strategy, hundreds of thousands of lives have been saved,” said the President.
“We will move on to greatness. This is a phrase that you will hear a lot, because that is what will happen,” said Trump, forecasting a strong third quarter, an excellent quarter and then sparking the pent up demand year. “It’s a transition to greatness. And greatness is next year,” he insisted.
Trump also signaled a new fallback strategy designed to spark his base’s fervor by accusing his predecessor of mounting an attempt to undo his 2016 victory in what his supporters call the “deep state plot”.
Shortly after Trump’s intervention, the scale of the Republican electoral attack became even clearer when Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley insisted on the conspiracy theory in the Senate.
“The rule of law is at risk if the federal government manages to get away with violating the Constitution to do what it did to Lieutenant General Flynn,” Grassley said. “Given all we know now about the false foundations of the investigation, it’s time for us to ask ourselves: what did Obama and Biden know and when did they know?”
CNN’s Arman Azad and Manu Raju contributed to this story.
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