Trump erupts over poll slump and threatens to sue
campaign manager
President blows his top in Friday argument and
reportedly tells Brad Parscale ‘I’m not fucking losing to Joe Biden’ in November
Kenya
Evelyn in Washington
@LiveFromKenya
Thu 30 Apr
2020 17.10 BSTLast modified on Thu 30 Apr 2020 23.50 BST
Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday. According
to multiple sources, the president cursed at Parscale repeatedly.
A row
between Donald Trump and his election campaign manager, Brad Parscale, over a
recent drop in the president’s poll numbers resulted in Trump threatening
Parscale with a lawsuit.
The
argument reportedly happened last Friday, as the US death toll from the
coronavirus pandemic reached 50,000 in three months and the fallout continued
from Trump’s suggestion at the White House the night before that taking
disinfectant internally could be examined as a possible treatment for
coronavirus, even though it is potentially lethal.
But the
blow-up was just the latest in a series of tense moments between Trump and his
2020 re-election team, according to reports from multiple outlets including the
Washington Post, the Associated Press and CNN.
“I’m not
fucking losing to Joe Biden,” Trump reportedly said on a call with Parscale
during a meeting with aides. According to multiple sources who spoke to the AP,
the president cursed at Parscale repeatedly.
Trump
deflected much of the blame for the disappointing polls, ignoring criticism of
his performances at the podium during daily White House coronavirus press
briefings, where he has repeatedly attacked the media for questioning delays in
the government’s response, pushed misinformation and shown little empathy for
victims.
In a
meeting two days before the call, political advisers briefed Trump on data
sourced internally and from the Republican National Committee. The figures
showed the president losing ground against Biden in key battleground states.
Advisers
had warned Trump to change his tone at daily coronavirus briefings, citing data
that showed the negative coverage was fueling a decline in approval ratings.
The
president allegedly balked at the guidance, insisting viewers “love” them and
think he’s “fighting for them”. Trump instead pointed to restricted travel and
an inability to host campaign rallies as the source of the slump.
After
initially refusing to comply with recommendations he step back from the
briefings, Trump later relented – after making headlines over the disinfectant
row, which prompted cleaning product companies to issue public warnings against
ingesting or injecting disinfectant for any reason.
Last
Friday, the president took no questions and abruptly left the short briefing,
which had been stretching over two hours in evening prime time, and cancelled
his weekend press briefings altogether.
“He’s
pissed because he knows he messed up in those briefings,” a Republican close to
the White House reportedly told CNN.
He also
reportedly ranted about a New York Times story on him watching hours of cable
news a day and then fuming about his coverage, before spending the weekend
attacking reporters and media organizations on Twitter for their coronavirus
journalism.
One
official told the Washington Post the president was “in a terrible mood with
everyone late last week”.
Trump shot
back at reports of his growing frustration on Wednesday, telling Reuters he
doesn’t “believe the polls”.
“I believe
the people of this country are smart. And I don’t think that they will put a
man in who’s incompetent,” he said of Biden. Trump said he thought the election
did not represent a referendum on his administration’s handling of the
pandemic.
While
neither the sincerity nor the grounds of the president’s lawsuit threat against
Parscale isn’t clear, sources told CNN the two patched things up by that same
night. On Thursday, Trump tweeted that Parscale “is doing a great job”.
“I never
shouted at him (been with me for years, including the 2016 win), and have no
intention to do so,” he wrote.
The
president then lashed out at media outlets for reporting on the alleged
tensions, taking particular aim at MSNBC and its lead anchor, Brian Williams,
in a flood of tweets.
The new
White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, last week signaled that the
president’s White House coronavirus briefings would be less frequent and would
take a different slant, pivoting to preparations for reopening the US economy.
This week, Trump has been meeting with some state governors in the Oval Office.
Stephen
Collinson Profile
Analysis by
Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated
1523 GMT (2323 HKT) April 8, 2020
(CNN)The
chaos and confusion rocking President Donald Trump's administration on the most
tragic day yet of the coronavirus pandemic was exceptional even by his own
standards.
Trump set
out Tuesday to cement his image of a wartime leader facing down an
"invisible enemy" at a dark moment as the country waits for the virus
to peak and with the economy languishing in suspended animation.
"What
we have is a plague, and we're seeing light at the end of the tunnel," the
President said, on a day when a record number of Americans succumbed to the
wicked respiratory disease.
But instead
of putting minds at rest, Trump's wild performance instead put on a display
many of the personal and political habits that have defined his tumultuous
presidency. It was a troubling spectacle coming at such a wrenching chapter of
national life, the kind of moment when Presidents are called to provide
consistent, level leadership.
To begin
with, Trump sparked concern that he will prevent oversight of the disbursement
of economic rescue funds by removing a watchdog official responsible for
overseeing the $2 trillion package. The move, coming after Trump ousted an
intelligence community inspector general last week, was yet another sign that
an already impeached President is using the cover of the worst domestic crisis
since World War II to further erode constraints on his power.
Trump's
acting Navy secretary quit after an episode in which he called an aircraft
carrier captain dismissed for raising the alarm about virus infections among
his crew "stupid."
Then Trump
insisted he hadn't seen January memos by a top White House official warning
about the pandemic at the same time the President was dismissing it as a
threat.
He also
announced he was placing a "very powerful hold" on funding for the
World Health Organization, even though it correctly identified the scale of the
virus and he didn't. Then moments later, he insisted he did no such thing.
Adding to
the sense of farce, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham was moved
out, without ever having given a briefing, on yet another day of staff turmoil.
CNN's KFile reported Tuesday that her replacement, Kayleigh McEnany, recently
said that thanks to the President, "we will not see diseases like the
coronavirus come here."
Trump's top
economic adviser Larry Kudlow admitted that a small business rescue program was
off to "a bad start" after recipients struggled to register funds,
only for the President to celebrate the program's roaring success -- and to
credit his daughter Ivanka with personally creating 15 million jobs.
To top off
a disorientating day in the West Wing, the President presided over an unchained
news conference in which among other topics, he lashed out at mail-in voting,
making claims about fraud that don't square with the facts, even though he
recently cast such a ballot himself. The comment followed extraordinary scenes in
Wisconsin, after Republicans blocked the Badger State's Democratic governor
from delaying the state's primary over concern that voters could infect one
another with the novel coronavirus.
Trump's
daily jousts with the media recreate the adversarial dynamic of his 2016
campaign and much of his earlier presidency and invite his supporters to adopt
his narrative of events rather than fact-based critiques of his conduct. This
has been a successful device in the past to cement the anti-establishment
President with his followers.
But a new
CNN/SSRS poll Wednesday finds increasing overall concern about Trump's handling
of the coronavirus crisis following an initial spike in his ratings in recent
weeks.
A majority
of Americans -- 55% -- now say the federal government has done a poor job
preventing the spread of the disease in the United States, up eight points in
about a week. And 52% say they disapprove of the way Trump is handling the
outbreak. As usual, assessments of Trump break on partisan lines. Some 80% of Republicans
say the federal government has done a good job, and Trump's approval rating is
steady at 44%.
Also
Wednesday morning, a prominent model that tracks the coronavirus pandemic in
the United States has updated its projections to predict that the nation will
reach its peak number of daily Covid-19 deaths in four days and its peak use of
resources -- such as hospital beds and ventilators -- in three days.
The model
also predicts that far fewer people -- 60,415 -- than have been previously
projected will die due to Covid-19 by August.
That model,
from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of
Washington in Seattle, previously projected on Tuesday that about 82,000 people
would die by August and that the country wouldn't reach peak resource use until
next week.
A dark
day in the fight against Covid-19
In many
ways, it was just another inexplicable day of the Trump presidency.
Trump did
mention Americans grieving the loss of loved ones in his scripted remarks, but
the intensity of Trump's clashes with reporters and litany of outrageous claims
seemed incongruous with a backdrop of such human tragedy with more than 1,800
deaths reported in a single day.
There are,
after all, more confirmed cases in the United States than anywhere else in the
world -- even if there are some hopeful and preliminary signs that the wave of
infections may be beginning to slow in the New York epicenter.
The chaos
and contradictions coming from the administration do not just raise questions
about the White House's current management of the pandemic. They will cause
concern because the second stage of the national effort -- reopening the
economy and keeping a second wave of infections at bay -- will require focused
and subtle leadership that can win the confidence of the nation.
No White
House has ever faced the task of ensuring such an expansive economic package is
properly implemented and does not fall prey to corruption. There is little in
the history of the Trump administration that suggests this will go smoothly.
The
President sparked fresh fears about his capacity to properly oversee previous
rescue packages and those to come when it emerged he had removed Defense
Department Inspector General Glenn Fine from a post monitoring the stimulus
funds.
The move
prompted Democrats to warn that Trump is seeking to oversee the package
himself. Trump had already warned he will ignore a provision in the bill
requiring the special inspector general to report to Congress on the handling
of the funds.
His
dismissal of Fine was the latest swipe against the structures of government
meant to hold him accountable -- that peaked with his defiance of the
impeachment inquiry.
On Monday,
Trump personally attacked a Health and Human Services inspector general who
uncovered massive shortages of vital protective equipment at hospitals battling
Covid-19.
On Friday
night, the President fired the intelligence community inspector general who
alerted lawmakers to a report about his pressure on Ukraine to dig up dirt on
his Democratic foe Joe Biden.
Trump
dismisses Navarro memos
With the
pandemic taking a tighter grip on the United States, Trump has taken vigorous
steps to cover up for his multiple statements earlier this year downplaying the
virus.
The
question of his responsibility for a lack of preparation for the crisis
intensified on Tuesday when The New York Times revealed that a top economic
official, Peter Navarro, had written a memo to the President in January warning
coronavirus could become a "full blown pandemic" causing trillions of
dollars in economic damage and risking the health of millions of Americans.
How Peter
Navarro went from an anti-China 'gadfly' to trusted Trump
coronavirus adviser
How Peter
Navarro went from an anti-China 'gadfly' to trusted Trump coronavirus adviser
The
revelation undercut the President's repeated declarations that nobody could
have foreseen the consequences of the virus. It also left him in a tricky spot.
Either he had to admit that he had seen the warning, or if he said it didn't
reach him, he would paint a picture of dysfunction at the White House.
He did
neither, seeking to foster misinformation and confusion around the document
designed to disguise his own culpability.
The
President maintained that he did not see the memo or memos until several days
ago.
"I
didn't see them. I didn't look for them either," the President said, then
argued falsely he had reached the same conclusion as Navarro, citing his
decision to stop flights from China. In fact, Trump was downplaying the impact
of the virus as recently as early last month.
When asked
why he did not level with Americans about the potential impact of the crisis if
his unexpressed thoughts aligned with Navarro, Trump said: "I'm not going
to go out and start screaming, this could happen."
"I'm a
cheerleader for this country. I don't want to create havoc and shock."
Trump
nominates a new foil -- the WHO
Unlike the
President, the World Health Organization has warned for weeks about the gravity
of coronavirus.
The WHO
declared a Public Health Emergency of International concern on January 30 after
sending a team to Wuhan and to meet Chinese leaders in Beijing.
On the same
day, at a rally in Michigan, the President said of the virus, "We think we
have it very well under control."
But on
Tuesday, the President lashed out at the global health body, claiming it had
underplayed the threat of the virus and that he had got it right.
"We're
going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO. We're going to put a very
powerful hold on it," the President said in his briefing.
"They
called it wrong. They missed the call. They could have called it months
earlier," Trump said.
"It's
a great thing if it works but when they call every shot wrong that's no
good," he said, accusing the WHO of being biased towards China, which
Republicans have accused of trying to cover up the virus.
Given the President's
long timeline of false statements and predictions, that must go down as one of
the most audacious comments of his presidency. It was also reflective of his
own tendency to nominate an enemy and accuse it of the very transgression that
he is accused of perpetrating.
He added to
the confusion by denying that he had said that he would halt funding to the WHO
-- a move that would be counterproductive in a pandemic and would undermine
already compromised perceptions of US leadership on the crisis.
"I'm
not saying I'm going to do it, but we are going to look at it," the
President said.
The
President was also unable to provide much clarity on the chaos afflicting the
Navy, following the resignation of Thomas Modly. The acting Navy secretary quit
a day after leaked audio revealed he called the ousted commander of the USS
Theodore Roosevelt "stupid" in an address to the ship's crew.
This came a
little more than a week after Capt. Brett Crozier sent a memo warning of
coronavirus spreading among the sailors. The memo leaked and Modly subsequently
removed Crozier from command.
"I had
no role in it. I don't know him but I've heard he was a very good man,"
the commander in chief said.
But Trump
also rebuked Crozier.
"He
didn't have to be Ernest Hemingway. He made a mistake but he had a bad day. And
I hate seeing bad things happen."
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