Donald Trump only started to take Coronavirus seriously once he realized it would harm voters in red states and swing states crucial to his reelection in November.
A blockbuster new report in The Washington Post claimed on Monday that aides had to explain to the President how the pandemic would affect Republican voters.
Once he understood the virus could harm his own supporters, he began to take it seriously.
“In the past couple of weeks, senior advisers began presenting Trump with maps and data showing spikes in coronavirus cases among ‘our people’ in Republican states, a senior administration official said,” the WaPo article says.
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“They also shared projections predicting that virus surges could soon hit politically important states in the Midwest — including Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, the official said.”
“This new approach seemed to resonate, as he hewed closely to pre-scripted remarks in a trio of coronavirus briefings last week,” the report claims.
This reporting is consistent with the President’s behavior from earlier in the crisis. He downplayed the seriousness of the disease, referred to its’ virulence as a “hoax” and said it would just disappear.
As The Washington Post explains:
“[U]ntil recently, the president was largely unreceptive to that message, they said, not fully grasping the magnitude of the pandemic — and overly preoccupied with his own sense of grievance, beginning many conversations casting himself as the blameless victim of the crisis.”
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Darragh Roche is a journalist covering U.S. politics and media
