On a day that laid bare his refashioned campaign strategy, Trump hammered out a tough law-and-order push, escalated a Cold War with China and tried to show he is managing the fight against Covid-19 after weeks of neglect.
The President has been flailing for days, as a vicious surge in infections races across the sunbelt, caused in part by governors who heeded his calls to open states before the pathogen was suppressed.
With one poll showing him down 20 points to Democratic presumptive nominee Joe Biden on who can best handle the situation, Trump has taken the rare step of performing a partial reversal -- on the wearing of masks -- though he is still reluctant to model one in public. He also decided that outright denial of the worst public health crisis in 100 years was not working and has returned to the White House briefing room to spin the disaster as best he can.
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The anchor of Trump's new, punchier briefings is a scripted opening in which he cherry picks the most hopeful aspects of a pandemic that has destroyed the rhythm of American daily life and turned the economy upside down.
But in his two briefings so far, his rejigged approach seems more like a cosmetic political exercise than an attempt to provide the country with meaningful public health advice as the pandemic gets worse.
One problem is that he will not appear alongside public health experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx.
"They're briefing me, I'm meeting them. I just spoke to Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx is right outside and they're giving me all of everything they know as of this point in time and I'm giving the information to you," Trump said Wednesday.
"I think it's probably a very concise way of doing it. It seems to be working out very well."
Trump, however, went on to make misleading statements that would never have been uttered by a public health expert but that he seems to think are politically helpful. He blamed migrants from Mexico crossing the closed border for causing a spike in cases, along with young people attending anti-racism protests.
The President also claimed that kids with strong immune systems don't bring the coronavirus home and that all schools can open in the fall. He did not provide any scientific evidence for the assertion or explain, for instance, why children who often pick up the flu and colds in class would not be at similar risk for transmitting the coronavirus.
And yet again, Trump claimed falsely that the United States is doing "amazing things" in comparison to other countries as it fights the virus. In fact, the US lags fellow highly industrialized nations in suppressing infection curves and leads the world in infections and deaths.
"The President doesn't want doctors Fauci or Birx there because they are real time fact checkers," Dr. Jonathan Reiner, professor of medicine at George Washington University, told CNN's Kate Bolduan.
"Without them he can say things which are either misleading or
