Trump commits to skepticism about covid in the final stretch of the campaign

The president was hospitalized for 72 hours, undergoing two experimental treatments, and still ill with a life-threatening ailment.

The White House shaken by a string of infections.

At least three Republican senators infected.

Much of the Pentagon dome in quarantine.

But Trump's message, regarding a pandemic that has cost more than 210,000 American lives, remains unchanged: proceed with normal life and disregard the guidelines set by science.

Loyalty to the president goes through skepticism in the face of the health crisis and the strategy in the final stretch of the campaign is to promise a return to normalcy.

“I have learned a lot about Covid.

I understand it, I understand it, ”Trump said in a video he recorded inside Walter Reed Hospital, where he was admitted last Friday.

On Monday, when he announced that he would be leaving the hospital that same afternoon, he wrote: “Do not be afraid of Covid.

Don't let it dominate your life. "

And this Tuesday, from the White House, which he arrived the day before in a dramatic staging, soaring through the reddish skies of Washington's sunset aboard Marine One, the president has decided, with the authority of those who have the virus in his blood, to compare Covid-19 with the seasonal flu, a comparison he made in the first months of the pandemic and which, to the alarm of scientists and while deaths accumulated in the country, he had already banished from his speech.

“Flu season is coming!

Every year, many people, sometimes more than 100,000, and despite the vaccine, die from the flu, ”the president tweeted.

“Are we going to close our country [due to the threat of deaths from influenza]?”, He added “No, we have learned to live with that, just as we are learning to live with Covid, in most territories.

It is much less lethal! ”.

Facebook has eliminated the president's post for containing misleading information and Twitter has accompanied the publication with a message warning that it was "misleading and potentially harmful information."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that the range of deaths from the flu in a typical year is 34,000 to 43,000.

Other Republican voices were added to the president's voice, such as Senator Ron Johnson, who also tested positive for Covid-19 last week and spoke of "a level of unjustified hysteria."

"From day one," continued the Republican legislator from Wisconsin, "we should not have proceeded with the activity closures, we must move on with our lives."

The Trump campaign has avoided offering signs of a moderation in activity, proceeding with plans for mass rallies, where in recent weeks attendees have not respected federal guidelines to wear masks and maintain social distance.

Vice President Mike Pence, who has tested negative in his last diagnostic test, will debate this Wednesday with his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, in Salt Lake City (Utah), and this Tuesday he refused to accept that plexiglass partitions be placed between the candidates.

On Thursday Pence will be campaigning in Arizona.

And, just in case there were doubts, Trump himself has also tweeted that he is looking forward to the debate with Democrat Joe Biden scheduled for next week in Miami (Florida).

Voiced by the media right, the unusual skepticism about the severity of the health crisis, which paradoxically intensifies just as it hits the very center of Republican power, has become a basic ingredient of the culture of loyalty to Trump.

The contagion of the president and the outbreak of cases in the White House and in the party have once again placed the pandemic at the nerve center of the campaign, since in recent weeks it was disputed with the message of law and order from the Republicans , the battle for the Supreme Court and Trump's tax returns.

That scenario with the focus on the pandemic is what the Democrats wanted, but the Republicans are not willing to bear the political cost.

The signals released on Tuesday indicate that Trump is preparing to go on the attack, a position where he performs much better than on the defensive.

The strategy that emerges is to downplay the threat of the virus, to present himself as the only candidate willing to reopen the country and save the economy.

Some in his campaign wanted to see in Trump's convalescence an opportunity to humanize him.

Awakening empathy in a certain moderate electorate, through an experience that has touched millions of Americans closely, the president had an opportunity to change the narrative of his management of a health crisis that had, according to polls, damaged his options reelection.

But that option was blown up with the messages issued by the president from within, including the hospital.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus offensive against the instances of power in the United States continued this Tuesday.

Several members of the Pentagon leadership have been quarantined after being exposed to the virus, after the positive of the Vice Commander of the Coast Guard, Admiral Charles Ray, according to the Department of Defense.

Among them, General Mark A. Milley and almost the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff that he presides.

From the president's Twitter account in the morning came the usual attacks on Joe Biden, the media and even Michael Bloomberg, media mogul and former candidate in the Democratic primary, who has now invested millions in a series of ads against Trump in Florida.

"I feel great!" Trump tweeted, before his doctor confirmed it.

Other doctors warn that the president's optimism may be premature.

But Trump is already on to something else.

Subscribe here to the

about the elections in the United States