The Coronavirus Briefs Reboot

President Donald Trump resumed his coronavirus press briefings on Tuesday after a two month hiatus, and it was strikingly different from his previous shows. It probably won’t get the boffo ratings that Trump boasted about before, but at least it will get better reviews.

The first round of coronavirus press briefings were the most compellingly bizarre spectacles this side of Netflix’ “The Tiger King.” They featured up to two hours of Trump angrily berating reporters for their questions, pushing his top health experts away from the podium to contradict what they were saying, and making extravagant promises that everything was under control and America would soon be roaring back to business. He stopped doing it after extemporaneously saying to a live nationwide audience that perhaps covid patients should be injected with bleach or other household disinfectants, and well-deserved and widespread ridicule ensued. Trump said the briefings were a waste of time because of how the fake news media twisted his words to make him look bad, but reports indicated that Trump’s most trusted advisors persuaded him was the live-on-air that was dragging his poll numbers down.

This time Trump mostly stuck to the script during a taut thirty minutes at the podium, and he struck a very different tone. He freely admitted that “It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better,” which is very uncharacteristic of man who prefers to talk about how everything’s great and it’s going to get so much better your head will spin, and he added “That’s something I don’t like saying about things, but that’s the way it is.”

He also urged Americans to wear face masks while in public, despite his long resistance to doing so himself. He once again boasted of the extensive testing that’s being done in America, although he recently told a rally crowd he’d asked health officials “to slow the testing down, please” and has proposed cutting funding for the tests. All in a surprisingly somber voice and civil demeanor, with no castigation of the reporters and none of his insult comic shtick about Democrats, but it remains to be seen how long her can keep that up.

Trump had some trouble answering questions about his infrequent mask-wearing while in public, but the only big gaffe came in response to an off-topic question about Ghislaine Maxwell, who currently in jail facing charges that she groomed underage to have sex with notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who officials say committed suicide in federal prison after being convicted of rape and other sex crimes. “I wish her well,” Trump said, admitting that he Maxwell and Epstein from frequent encounters on the Palm Beach, Florida, social circuit. Trump ordinarily dismisses anyone he knows who is in trouble as people he hardly knows, but in the case of Maxwell there’s too much photographic proof of the friendship, and we guess he didn’t want to seem a fair weather friend.

Trump’s longtime association with Epstein and Maxwell wasn’t much of a problem when he was running against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, whose hound dog of an ex-president also had close ties to the couple, but this time around the Democratic nominee isn’t named Clinton. Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden might choose to take the high road and not exploit the Trump-Epstein-Maxwell relationship, but not everyone opposed to Trump will be quite so polite. Expect “I wish her well” to become a widely seen internet “meme.”

What matters more is what Trump does to slow the spread of the virus, and on Tuesday he didn’t lay out any specific plan. At least he didn’t exude improbable optimism and make extravagant promises, and we suppose that’s a start.

— Bud Norman

The American King and the “Tiger King”

President Donald Trump has boasted about the big television ratings for his daily press briefings on the coronavirus, but he should keep in mind that “Tiger King” is the biggest hit right now on Netflix, and arguably for the same reasons. Both shows have a captive audience at the moment, and both are such bizarre spectacles that it’s hard to look away.

The press briefings always feature plenty of exaggerated self-congratulations — on Monday he said “Everything we did was right” — along with plenty of finger pointing at past administrations and Democratic governors and congressman to explain any problems, as well as insults to the “fake news” media and always a slew of statements that are easily proved false. Another highlight of Monday’s episode was Trump’s claim that he has “total authority as president” to rescind any state’s stay-at-home orders and business closings, which most constitutional scholars say is not true.

Trump couldn’t cite anything in the Constitution or federal law that gives him such authority, but offered to provide a brief at some point. When asked what his administration had done to prevent shortages of medical equipment or mitigate the spread of the virus in the month of February he angrily replied “We did a lot,” and although he couldn’t point to anything in particular he promised to provide a list at some point. In both cases we don’t expect the information will be coming anytime soon.

Several Democratic governors in populous states and a few Republicans in states more sparsely populated but hard-hit by the virus have indicated they don’t agree that Trump has the authority to rescind their public health measures, and will defy any attempt to open their states before their experts think it safe. Trump warned that any governor who defies him will pay a price in their next election, but in most cases the governors are far more popular than Trump, whose handling of the crisis is likely to be a severe liability in his reelection campaign, especially if there’s a spike in infections and fatalities after issuing an all-clear order.

Conservatism used to be a political philosophy that sought to conserve such time-tested traditions as limits on executive power and allowing a great deal of autonomy to the states according to the 10th Amendment, but these newfangled conservatives seem to believe only in complete fealty to Trump. Even if Trump somehow prevails in a packed Supreme Court, he won’t be able to order businesses to risk the health of their workers by reopening too soon, or to order private citizens to leave their homes and go on a shopping spree, and if he tries to that might be a step too far away from traditional conservatism for even some of the most die-hard fans.

We certainly hope so, as we want to see as many Americans as possible survive this plague, and we’d like to see some of those time-tested constitutional traditions survive as well.

— Bud Norman