The campaign's advertising pause, with ads slated to resume Monday, comes as Americans are recoiling from Trump's lack of leadership on the pandemic and there are fewer than 100 days to go before Election Day. At a time when the country is squarely focused on the threat posed by Covid-19 -- the US surpassed 4.5 million cases on Friday -- Trump put his muddled message on full display during a trip to Florida.
While speaking at a campaign event with local sheriffs, Trump -- who again did not wear a mask -- tried to stoke fear about presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and calls to defund the police as attendees did not socially distance. He then downplayed the more than 153,000 US deaths from coronavirus during a roundtable focused on both the virus and Hurricane Isaias with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
When asked about coronavirus deaths by a reporter at the roundtable, Trump replied: "Well, I hate it anywhere, but if you look at other countries, other countries are doing terribly."
INTERACTIVE: Tracking Covid-19 cases in the US
And in another example of either denial or a desire to deliberately mislead the American people, Trump said Florida is "doing really well," even though the state now has the second highest number of coronavirus cases in all 50 states and reported record deaths for the fourth day on Friday.
Earlier in the day, even though Americans broadly disapprove of his handling of the virus, Trump once again tweeted the nonsensical argument that if the US "had no testing, or bad testing, we would show very few cases."
Dr. Jonathan Reiner -- a professor of medicine at The George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences and former medical adviser to President George W. Bush -- said when he saw Trump visiting with the crowd on an airport tarmac in Tampa, Florida, with no mask, his heart broke for the doctors and nurses at hospitals that "are flooded with people dying of this virus."
"The President comes down to Florida without a mask? That's like smoking a cigarette in a cancer ward. What a slap in the face," Reiner said on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" Friday night. "Either he doesn't get it or he refuses to tell the public the truth."
Instead of using his bully pulpit to try to jumpstart stalled negotiations on the next coronavirus stimulus or amplifying the message of his medical advisers about the five things Americans can do to get the coronavirus under control, the President used his campaign event to drive a three-pronged message about Biden -- that he is losing his mental acuity; that he is controlled by left-wing supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders; and that he won't keep Americans safe or protect the suburbs.
On top of that attempt to define Biden, Trump and his advisers this week continued building their smokescreen that the November election will be tainted by voter fraud as a way to delegitimize results.
But as Trump continues to sink in the polls, there is little evidence that his discordan
