As a substitute of driving a message, or making an attempt to solid consideration on Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump’s aides have been largely paralyzed as th
As a substitute of driving a message, or making an attempt to solid consideration on Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump’s aides have been largely paralyzed as they tried to reply to audio recordings of their boss talking freely with Mr. Woodward, acknowledging he deliberately minimized the specter of the virus to keep away from “a panic” and declaring the virus was “within the air” effectively earlier than authorities officers stated that publicly.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump introduced a shock information convention the place he had nothing to announce. He entered the briefing room merely to reiterate false statements in regards to the administration’s coronavirus response and defend himself, once more, towards revelations in Mr. Woodward’s e book.
Mr. Trump typically feels compelled to defend himself, however that nearly at all times merely retains a narrative alive. “I didn’t lie,” he stated Thursday when requested to clarify why he advised Mr. Woodward the virus was “lethal stuff” and admitted it was extra lethal than “even your strenuous flu” whereas telling the general public the other. He additionally claimed that “everybody knew it was airborne” again in February.
The Woodward fiasco got here after a number of days of Mr. Trump’s being consumed by one other damaging narrative, spurred by an article in The Atlantic. The article, citing unidentified sources, described a historical past of the president making denigrating statements about members of the army. When the uproar over the story was lastly dying down on Monday, the Labor Day vacation, Mr. Trump breathed recent life into it by holding a information convention and speaking about it once more.
Mr. Trump’s advisers would really like him to show the race right into a alternative between himself and Mr. Biden. As a substitute, Mr. Trump is extra snug turning the marketing campaign right into a referendum on himself.
“Donald Trump doesn’t look like accountable for the information cycle basically as a result of he’s not accountable for occasions,” stated Steve Schmidt, a longtime Republican strategist who’s an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump, and who advises the anti-Trump group the Lincoln Mission. “The nation is profoundly uncontrolled underneath his watch.”
Mr. Schmidt, who suggested President George W. Bush as he was working for re-election in 2004, stated that within the remaining weeks of a presidential race, the one who the race is a referendum on is continuously the one who is dropping. Proper now, he stated, “the race is considerably about Trump, and the whole lot he tries to do to vary the topic simply isn’t working.”