At a Thursday event on the White House lawn celebrating his administration’s efforts to abolish regulations on business, the President promised to take back control of the national agenda.JONATHAN ERNST/Reuters
Less than four months from Election Day, U.S. President Donald Trump’s bid for a second term is hitting new lows. The coronavirus pandemic, which he is widely accused of mishandling, is out of control and shows no sign of abating. His polling has cratered, including in key swing states. The economy remains a wreck.
This week, facing non-stop bad news, the President dumped a long-time aide as campaign manager. And he turned White House speeches into rants about Joe Biden, his Democratic challenger.
But Mr. Trump’s campaign seemed similarly chaotic four years ago, as he trailed in the polls, shook up his senior staff and remained continually mired in scandals. Then, as now, he banked on whipping up a culture war to motivate his voters against the odds. And that improbable victory gives him a reason to believe that he can again execute a stunning reversal.
At a Thursday event on the White House lawn celebrating his administration’s efforts to abolish regulations on business, the President promised to take back control of the national agenda. He vowed that, starting next Tuesday, he would roll out new policies on immigration, education and helping the suburbs.
Who will Joe Biden pick as his vice-presidential candidate? A guide to the frontrunners
Why is there a resurgence of COVID-19 cases across the U.S.?
Ivanka Trump defends Goya tweet that watchdogs said violated ethics rules
“We have many exciting things that we’ll be announcing over the next eight weeks,” Mr. Trump said. “Things that nobody has even contemplated.”
The move is part of a broader reset. On Wednesday, the President demoted Brad Parscale, who spent more than two years managing the re-election campaign and has worked for Mr. Trump since before he got into politics. Mr. Parscale’s missteps included a disastrous rally in Tulsa, Okla., last month, at which Mr. Trump spoke to just 6,000 supporters in a two-thirds empty arena.
The shakeup happened the same day a Change Research poll of swing states showed Mr. Biden leading by eight points in Pennsylvania, seven in Florida, and six in Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona. An NBC survey, meanwhile, found the President trailing the presumptive Democratic nominee by 11 points nationally. Seventy-two per cent of respondents said the country was on the wrong track, and 59 per cent disapproved of Mr. Trump’s handling of the pandemic.
The Change Research poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 1.5 percentage points. On the NBC poll, it’s 3.27.
The President has taken fire from across the political spectrum for failing to lead the country’s COVID-19 response. In a Washington Post op-ed Thursday, Republican Maryland Governor Larry Hogan described buying coronavirus tests from South Korea because the Trump administration would not provide them.
“The White House failed to issue public warnings, draw up a 50-state strategy, or dispatch medical gear or lifesaving ventilators from the national stockpile to American hospitals,” he wrote. “Waiting around for the president to run the nation’s response was hopeless.”
The country has recorded nearly 3.7 million cases and 141,000 deaths. Some of the worst-hit states in recent weeks – such as Florida, Arizona and Georgia – are led by pro-Trump governors who, like the President, have been skeptical of physical-distancing measures.
“This is absolutely a low point for Trump, but we don’t know how much lower he can potentially go. The big question is, can he self-correct this behaviour or not?” said Gary Nordlinger, a political consultant and professor at George Washington University. “Since May, all of Trump’s problems have been self-inflicted. Just when I think he can’t do any worse, he does.”
The White House, for instance, has even picked a fight with Anthony Fauci, one of its own public-health officials. Staffers circulated talking points to reporters accusing Dr. Fauci of being wrong on the pandemic, presidential trade adviser Peter Navarro published an anti-Fauci op-ed in USA Today and Dan Scavino, the White House’s communications director, posted a cartoon on Facebook portraying Mr. Fauci as an alarmist. Dr. Fauci, a television fixture during the pandemic, has repeatedly commanded more public trust than Mr. Trump in opinion polls.
The President has so far banked on culture war rhetoric, particularly targeting Black Lives Matter, to resuscitate his campaign. In one ad, Mr. Trump falsely suggests Mr. Biden wants to defund police departments and make it impossible for them to respond to 911 calls. In an interview with CBS, the President dismissed questions about police killings of Black people and the use of Confederate battle flags by his supporters.
His delivery has frequently been shaky. At a news conference announcing sanctions on China earlier this week, Mr. Trump went on a tangent about Mr. Biden, accusing him of planning to “abolish the suburbs” if elected. On Thursday, the President diverged from his speech about cutting red tape to enthuse about the National Guard cracking down on anti-racism protests (“like a knife cutting through butter”).
Such tactics worked for Mr. Trump the last time he was running for president, when he built his bid on promising to keep Latino immigrants and Muslims out of the country. He even went through a similar purge of top aides, when Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon took over from Paul Manafort.
“If you go back to 2016, it’s not as though the Donald Trump campaign was a finely tuned machine,” said David Lublin, an associate professor of government at American University. Still, he contended, Mr. Trump benefited from an advantage then that he does not have now: His 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, was “polarizing” for voters, a problem Mr. Biden does not have.
Barbara Perry, a presidential scholar at the University of Virginia, said Mr. Trump’s strategy resembles that of Richard Nixon, who won the 1968 election by appealing to voters afraid of that year’s widespread riots and protests. This time around, however, there appears to be more public support for the demonstrations.
As with so much of Mr. Trump’s presidency, there are few historic precedents, she said. While Jimmy Carter’s ultimately unsuccessful re-election bid in 1980 foundered in large part because of his handling of the Iranian hostage crisis, even Mr. Carter was dealing with a relatively discrete problem and not a pandemic affecting virtually every American.
“It’s a cataclysm that directly impacts every single person and Trump’s not doing his job very well and the economy is tanking and we have racial unrest,” said Prof. Perry, director of presidential studies at the Miller Center of Public Affairs. “For him, it seems like the worst of all possible perfect storms.”
Our Morning Update newsletter is written by Globe editors, giving you a concise summary of the day’s most important headlines. Sign up today.