If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the Veep has been going on a covert reelection tour.
By John T. Bennett
Washington Bureau Chief
Independent
The entire United States and its major news outlets seem transfixed by two things, and only those two things these days.
One is the coronavirus pandemic. And the other is Donald Trump, the president who is pushing to open a country still awash in Covid-19 microbes.
When it comes to presidential pivots, Barack Obama deserved much of the mocking he received from national security and trade wonks for its “pivot to Asia.” It was more tap water than the flavored seltzer the White House promised, never quite fizzing and bubbling in anyone’s glass.
The current occupant of the seat in the Oval Office behind the storied Resolute Desk pivots more than any president in any era. He pivots more than did NBA legend Michael Jordan – back in the news thanks to the Last Dance documentary – trying to find just enough room between defender to get off his patented fall-away jump shot.
Trump pivots from policy stance to policy stance, sometimes within hours of taking a new one. A prime example: He told reporters in Arizona on Tuesday afternoon he likely would terminate the White House coronavirus task force, opting to distribute its functions within the sprawling federal bureaucracy and shift his messaging to revving up the country’s crippled economy (just in time for his reelection campaign).
By the next morning, however, the cable news president had changed his mind. The task force, it turned out, was safe — for now. Like his nightly coronavirus briefings which he delivered so often alongside that task force, it had done little for his public relations, so it stopped being important.
Once Trump realized his daily turns at the White House lectern were not helping his reelection chances, he essentially handed all responsibility to state leaders. In stunning bluntness, new White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Wednesday evening described the West Wing as a mere Covid-19 consultancy, ready to help governors but not at all in charge of what happens next to a country in crisis, with over 1.2 million confirmed cases and at least 73,500 deaths according to Johns Hopkins University.
“This is a governor-led effort. The president has said that governors make the decisions as to move forward and we encourage them to follow our phased approach,” McEnany told reporters during her second official briefing.
The president even made his return to the road with a quasi-campaign trip to Arizona, a state which he and his campaign team still think he could pull into the red column after losing it by less than 3 percentage points in 2016 to Hillary Clinton.
And Trump has teased another trip — to Ohio. The Buckeye State isn’t much of a swing state these days, but any first-term incumbent or presidential candidate is going to spend a lot of time there. It’s just smart politics. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told reporters that that trip won’t happen this week, but the president is ready to hit the campaign trail; he even suggested his raucous rallies might soon resume.
But there is a member of the Trump team who already has been hitting 2020 battleground states under the guise of getting a firsthand look at frontline workers toiling away amid the pandemic: Vice President Mike Pence, Trump’s ever-loyal No. 2, a man the kids might call his “ride or die.”
But of the five battleground states Pence will have visited by Friday, none rank higher than 15th (Virginia) among confirmed coronavirus cases and one ranks 27th (Minnesota). Not exactly the epicenter of the outbreak inside the United States.
Pence began his tour of first-tier and second-level swing states on April 1st, with a visit to a Wal-Mart distribution centre in Zion Crossroads, Virginia. The facility lies in Louisa County in central Virginia – Trump country. For the Trump-Pence ticket to snatch the Mid-Atlantic commonwealth from Democrats in November, they will need a huge GOP turnout in such counties.