Trump’s campaign plots a triumphant return, despite risk of coronavirus relapse
In President Donald Trump’s three-day hospital stay, his campaign saw an opportunity: a political tale of a triumphant return, a great American comeback and a leader who has personally fought off the coronavirus and won.
With the president still ill and new cases of COVID-19 emerging at the White House, allies of Trump flooded the airwaves to tout the president’s fortitude and newly developed understanding of the virus that has ripped through his inner circle.
“President Trump is taking the coronavirus head on, just like he’s been fighting for America for four years,” Tim Murtaugh, director of communications for the Trump campaign, told McClatchy. “It’s great to see him feeling better.”
The messaging strategy is fraught with risk, including the real possibility that the worst days for Trump are still ahead from both the standpoint of the virus and the political fallout associated with the disease that the president downplayed and is now spreading at the White House.
Trump left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday evening, four days after testing positive for the coronavirus, with many questions about his health still remaining.
Doctors treating the president and White House officials familiar with his care refused to provide the date of Trump’s last negative test or speak openly about his current medical condition.
Despite an acknowledgement from his physician that he had to receive supplemental oxygen at least once, Trump declared in a tweet that he felt better than he did 20 years ago. That followed a quick drive on Sunday so that Trump could wave to supporters gathered outside the hospital.
On Monday, Trump was dismissing the threat of a virus that had hospitalized him and killed over 210,000 people in the United States.
“Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life,” Trump tweeted. “We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”
By evening, he was tweeting that he planned to get back on the campaign trail. Trump’s campaign is planning to seize on that full-charge ahead sentiment less than a month before the election as it seeks to portray a candidate that is strong because he has overcome the deadly disease.
Donald Trump Jr., one of the president’s sons, highlighted the emerging message in an email to supporters on Sunday.
“We are in the final stretch of this Election,” he said, “and while my father is working hard to get back on the road as quickly as possible, it’s up to us to keep our movement strong for his EPIC RETURN.”
Uncertainties remain about the course that the disease will take. One of the president’s physicians, Dr. Sean Conley, acknowledged on Monday that Trump “may not entirely be out of the woods yet.”
The risk of a relapse is real.
“We should keep in mind that COVID-19 often has a biphasic course — that there’s often an initial illness that’s not too severe and gets better, and there’s a relapse with a more severe clinical course,” said Dr. Eric Toner, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Trump’s initial messages to Americans when he entered the hospital were more measured. Officials who spoke to him, including Vice President Mike Pence, said he encouraged coronavirus prevention measures such as hand washing.
In a video statement he had released on Sunday Trump said that he had “learned a lot about covid” through his illness.
“I learned it by really going to school,” Trump said. “This is the real school. This isn’t the let’s-read-the-book school. And I get it. And I understand it. And it’s a very interesting thing. And I’m going to be letting you know about it.”
CREDIBILITY GAP
Trump’s conflicting messages come amid an outbreak of coronavirus at the White House, where lackadaisical attitudes toward mask use, social distancing and other public health guidelines may have fueled a superspreader event with top officials and lawmakers in attendance, further eroding public trust in the president’s leadership.
A new poll conducted by CNN released on Monday found that 60% of Americans — a record high — disapprove of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, the most important issue to voters in the 2020 campaign.
Support among women and seniors, in particular, has decreased, just as the president’s campaign is trying to win those critical voter groups back from his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.
“He has no credibility on this issue from months of obfuscation and lying and misleading about how critical this virus is,” said Michael Hardaway, a former Democratic spokesman and tech entrepreneur.
A senior administration official told McClatchy that the president, in private, is more concerned about his diagnosis than he has projected in public.
“He’s taking it very seriously,” the official said when asked if the president had been humbled by the illness. “Of course there’s concern.”
That sober assessment of the impact of COVID-19 is a message that has been missing from Trump’s campaign team.
In a tweet from his hospital suite, Trump said he would soon be returning to the campaign trail.
“That is more for the benefit of the psychology of both the president and the general public,” said Trump campaign advisory board member Ken Blackwell earlier in the day, “than it is for the execution of the state-by-state revving up of the campaign.”
Blackwell said it was important for the president to refocus the campaign on issues that benefit him — like securing Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court before the Nov. 3 election.
“It one gives you a full complement of the Supreme Court, but it also splits the public attention on covid and the president and the confirmation process. He benefits. His campaign benefits from that very dramatically,” he said.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, whose own seat is in jeopardy this year and whose reelection may rely on enthusiastic turnout for Trump, said on Monday that he had spoken with the president about an economic stimulus package and Barrett’s confirmation. “He sounds terrific — very engaged and ready to get back to work,” Graham said.
COMEBACK NARRATIVE
Returning to the White House on Monday evening, Trump walked across the South Lawn from Marine One, the presidential helicopter, and up the stairs to the South Portico porch, where he turned to face cameras, removed the mask he had been wearing and stuffed it in his pocket.
It was part of a coordinated effort by Trump and his campaign aides to present the image of a president conquering coronavirus.
“We’re gonna defeat this virus. We’re not gonna surrender to it like Joe Biden would surrender to this virus,” Mercedes Schlapp said Monday morning on Fox News.
Katrina Pierson, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, likewise told McClatchy that Trump showed “strength and fortitude while being treated” for the coronavirus. “His commitment to the American people is unwavering and a testament to a leadership style that Joe Biden couldn’t fathom with notecards or a teleprompter.”
Republican Voters Against Trump founder Sarah Longwell said that Trump is trying to project confidence at a time when Biden is out campaigning and the president is stuck inside. In the face of contradictory information from the White House, however, she said the campaign’s comeback narrative falls flat.
“This very much stands in contrast to the notion that the president has learned any particular lesson about covid and how contagious it is and how dangerous it is, because the campaign continues to mock it,” she said.
This story was originally published October 6, 2020 at 4:00 AM with the headline "Trump’s campaign plots a triumphant return, despite risk of coronavirus relapse."
