June Was A Bad Month For The Trumpist Regime-- July Has Started Out Worse

Wednesday was a horrible day in the history of the pandemic. The U.S. reported 51,097 confirmed new COVID cases. Then Thursday was even worse-- 57,236 new cases. 131,544 Americans have died and of the current cases, 15,907 are serious or critical enough to know that the death rate is likely to go way up. The CDC projects that something like 150,000 Americans will have died by the end of the month with "the number of new deaths over the next four weeks in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wyoming likely [to] exceed the number reported over the last four weeks; others say the number of dead will be north of 160,000.

And voters know who to blame. In their most recent polling-- last week of June-- Change research found that Biden leads Trump 49 to 41 among likely voters nationally, and he leads by 6 points in the battleground (50 to 44), up 3 points over the last two weeks. They also found that a majority say that things are getting worse when it comes to COVID-19 and that voters are increasingly taking precautions like wearing masks and avoiding crowds, particularly in Sunbelt States where 53% of voters say things are reopening too quickly. Approval of Trump’s COVID response has never been lower in the battleground and nationally, and GOP governors get negative marks while majorities approve of how the Democratic governors are handling COVID-19. Majorities of voters believe that Trump is doing things that contribute to the recent uptick of COVID-19 cases."

It isn't helping the Republican Party that coronavirus infections are going up in 36 states, dangerously so in a dozen crucial Republican states. These were the Thursday one-day increases (+ cases per million residents)

• Florida +10,109 (7,874 cases per million Floridians)
• Texas +7,535 (6,313 cases per million Texans)
• Georgia +3,472 (8,261 cases per million Georgians)
• Arizona +3,333 (12,011 cases per million Arizonans)
• North Carolina +1,855 (6,532 cases per million North Carolinians)
• South Carolina +1,782 (7,711 cases per million South Carolinians)
• Tennessee +1,575 (6,866 cases per million Tennesseans)
• Louisiana +1,383 (13,242 cases per million Louisianans)
• Alabama + 1,149 (8,181 cases per million Alabamans)
• Arkansas +878 (7,315 cases per million Arkansans)
• Mississippi +870 (9,667 cases per million Mississippians)
• Iowa +709 (9,575 cases per million Iowans)

Just as New York state did last week, Chicago has just ordered that anyone from 15 COVID-afflicted states coming to the city, quarantine for 2 weeks.

A crack NY Times reporting team-- Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns-- looked into why June was such a terrible month for Trump, the political nadir of his presidency (so far) and blamed it on "three and a half years [of]... self-inflicted wounds as he played to his base and missteps by a fractured campaign." As Señor Trumpanzee headed off to Mount Rushmore yesterday, he was "facing the possibility of not just defeat but humiliation this fall. The disconnect between the surge in coronavirus cases and Mr. Trump’s dismissive stance toward the pandemic has been particularly pronounced, mystifying Democrats and Republicans alike; this week, as some states halted their reopening because of a record-setting number of new cases, the president predicted the virus would 'just disappear.'... [P]rivate Republican polls in recent weeks show the president struggling even in conservative states, leading Mr. Biden by less than five points in Montana and trailing him in Georgia and even Kansas, according to G.O.P. officials who have seen the data. Last month’s convergence of crises, and the president’s missteps in responding to them, have been well chronicled: his inflammatory response to racial justice protesters and his ill-considered rally in Tulsa, his refusal to acknowledge the resurgent virus or seriously address detailed reports about Russian operatives’ putting a cash bounty on American soldiers. It’s this kind of behavior, polls indicate, that has alienated swaths of swing voters."

Cone of Shame by Nancy Ohanian

Yet as demoralizing as June was for many Republicans, what was less visible were the frenetic, and often fruitless, attempts by top Republicans to soothe the president and steer him away from self-sabotage, while also manipulating him to serve their own purposes.

One Republican official who is in frequent contact with the campaign expressed incredulity at how some aides willfully distort the electoral landscape to mollify Mr. Trump, recalling one conversation in which they assured him he was faring well in Maine, a state where private polling shows he’s losing.

Interviews with almost four dozen Republican lawmakers, strategists and administration officials about Mr. Trump’s re-election bid paint a picture of a White House and a re-election effort adrift, at once paralyzed by Mr. Trump’s erratic behavior yet also dependent on him to execute his own Houdini-like political escape. Most of those interviewed requested anonymity to freely discuss internal deliberations, and to avoid retribution from the president.

...People close to the White House said that Mr. Trump remained stubbornly determined to feed the appetites of his hard-right base and deliver a message about what he describes as his great achievements in office. He’s also eager to recreate his tiny 2016 team.

Indeed, his well-financed political apparatus is more than ever a family affair, controlled by a small handful of Trump relatives and retainers who are exceedingly indulgent of the candidate-- and often at war with one another.

In an interview, Mr. Kushner, whose influence in the administration is exceeded only by Mr. Trump, said his strategy amounted to letting the president dictate his own re-election.

“He’s really the campaign manager at the end of the day,” Mr. Kushner said, adding: “Our job is to present him with data, give him ideas, help him structure. And then when he makes decisions on where he wants to go, the campaign was designed to be like a custom suit for him.”

Letting Trump be Trump will delight some of his most committed supporters, but it is likely to dishearten Republicans who are already nervous about losing the Senate and yielding further ground in the House.

...Mr. Kushner and Mr. Parscale appear increasingly at odds. Mr. Kushner has sent mixed signals about his view of the campaign manager: In a meeting with Republican officials this week, Mr. Kushner repeatedly shushed Mr. Parscale and told him to “shut up,” according to multiple people familiar with the events, but at other times he has urged friends of the president to tell Mr. Trump they think Mr. Parscale is doing a good job.

To some of Mr. Trump’s allies, including some in the conservative news media, the outsized role Mr. Kushner himself plays is part of the problem. And Mr. Trump, for his part, has been dismissive of Mr. Kushner in discussions with advisers in recent weeks, on matters including criminal justice reform, and has indicated that he wants to follow his own impulses, not his son-in-law’s, on how to campaign.

It’s those impulses that members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle spend much of their time on, seeking to quell his agitation over his sagging electoral prospects. Last week, for example, a handful of his White House advisers, but not Mr. Parscale, gathered in the Map Room to lift Mr. Trump’s spirits by showing him new campaign advertising.

Equally revealing-- at a moment when Mr. Trump is bleeding support from independents and some moderate Republicans-- is how often his advisers pacify him by highlighting his standing with voters he largely has in hand: those who participate in party primaries.

His campaign frequently trumpets the president’s record of success in influencing nominating contests, and in private, campaign officials wield his endorsement as a barely veiled threat.

In an email last month that was shared with Senate Republican chiefs of staff, Mr. Trump’s White House political director, Brian Jack, reminded the head of the Senate Republican campaign arm about the president’s then-unblemished record of endorsements.

“After last night’s election results,” Mr. Jack wrote in the message, obtained by the New York Times, “candidates endorsed by President Trump are now 64-0 in Congressional special and primary elections since the midterms.”

Such boasting, though, only drew more attention to an otherwise obscure House runoff last month for the North Carolina seat previously held by Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff. Mr. Meadows’s wife nudged Mr. Trump to endorse a candidate who wound up getting trounced, leaving the president unhappy with Mr. Meadows.

...What mystifies many Republicans about Mr. Trump is why he is so unwilling to take easy steps that could help remedy his political difficulties.

The most visible example is Mr. Trump’s refusal to promote mask-wearing to fight the virus, which poses perhaps the most dire threat to his re-election. Several advisers have privately urged him to do so, to little avail.

“What I find hard to understand is that in order for the president to get re-elected, he’s going to want to see a really strong economy,” Senator Mitt Romney said, adding that a recovery can’t happen without slowing the spread of the virus, which includes wearing masks. “So I would think the president would be on the air hammering his base to get the economy back and win the election.”

Mr. Romney’s lament illustrates the limits on the ability of Mr. Trump’s staff to influence him.

The president has resisted appeals from some advisers to start an onslaught of television advertising against Mr. Biden. Several people in touch with Mr. Trump and his campaign said the president strongly preferred seeing positive ads about his own accomplishments to negative ones about Mr. Biden. And he has told people he believes the race won’t be decided until October, as it was last time.

Mike Shields, a G.O.P. strategist involved in outside-spending efforts to support Mr. Trump, said Republicans had to seize the opportunity to sully Mr. Biden in a new way. He said efforts to brand Mr. Biden as nearly senile were not working.

“He should not be portrayed as doddering; he should be portrayed as what he is: someone who will drown our vulnerable economy and gladly sign Nancy Pelosi’s radical left legislation into law,” Mr. Shields said, adding of Mr. Biden, “General election voters simply don’t know this yet, so the sooner the better.”

Such a plan of attack would, however, require a disciplined president. Asked if his advisers could separate Mr. Trump from his Twitter feed as they did for a stretch in 2016, a senior administration official laughed and said Mr. Trump would do what he wanted.

Or, as Senator Rick Scott of Florida put it: “He is who he is. People know who he is. You think he’s going to change?”