Karma sometimes comes quickly

A rare crisis battering the White House that is not of the president’s own making, the spreading coronavirus has panicked global financial markets and alarmed Americans, many of whom have turned to the Oval Office for guidance and reassurances. But what they have found is a president struggling for a solution, unable to settle Wall Street and proving particularly vulnerable to a threat that is out of his control.

In an address to the nation Wednesday night, Trump [...] continued to play down the severity of the situation, painting it as a foreign threat that soon will be banished rather than focusing on managing the growing number of cases at home.

“This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history,” Trump declared.

  AP News

A foreign virus.

But the virus has appeared impervious to the Republican president’s bluster.

The virus does not have a Twitter account and, unlike so many previous Trump foes, is resistant to political bullying or Republican Party solidarity. It has preyed on his lack of curiosity and fears of germs while exposing divides and inadequacies within senior levels of his administration. It has taken away Trump’s favorite political tool, his rallies, from which he draws energy and coveted voter information.

And eight months from Election Day, it has endangered his best reelection argument — a strong economy — just as Joe Biden, the candidate emerging from the Democratic field, seems poised to take advantage of a political landscape upended by the virus.

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[A]s he has so often done before, Trump believed that through his force of will and ability to dominate a news cycle, he could alleviate the crisis, taking to Twitter and the White House briefing room podium to dismiss the threat.

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But Wall Street, unlike traditional political foes, has not listened. The markets opened down again Thursday morning, plummeting so quickly that automatic safeguards were triggered to temporarily halt trading.

And while Trump deemed the media coverage of the virus “a hoax” meant to create hysteria and tank his poll numbers, it is a harder sell to ask his supporters to dismiss media reports when they see people in their own communities getting sick, schools closing and local drugstores unable to keep hand sanitizer on the shelves.

Infighting erupted within the administration, as Trump blamed and then sidelined Azar, relegating the health secretary to a secondary role behind Vice President Mike Pence on the coronavirus task force. But while Trump empowered Pence and respected medical professionals to take the lead on briefings, he ignored his advisers’ advice to let the vice president be the public face of the administration’s response, according to the officials.

Unable to cede the spotlight, Trump spoke extemporaneously to reporters at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta on Friday, requiring the vice president, who addressed the media in Washington moments later, to correct the president’s misstatements about the availability of testing kits and the fate of a cruise ship filled with coronavirus patients.

He wants Pence there to take the blame for everything going wrong.

It was only on Monday, as he was flying from Florida back to Washington, that the economic severity of the crisis hit home for Trump, according to three of the officials and advisers.

In one cabin on Air Force One, Matt Gaetz, a Florida GOP congressman who had accompanied Trump to a series of Orlando fundraisers, had isolated himself after learning he’d come into contact with someone infected by the virus. And on the TV in Trump’s aircraft office, Fox News was broadcasting dire graphics illustrating the single worst day for stock markets since the 2008 financial crisis.

By the time the plane touched down at Joint Base Andrews, Trump told aides he would change tactics and propose a broad economic stimulus to reassure investors.

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“I think that in many ways this has made Trump a wartime president,” said former campaign communications director Jason Miller.

If this is how he handles war, we should be thankful he doesn't want to get us into more.

After surviving impeachment, Trump has in earnest remade his White House staff to focus on reelection, prioritizing loyalty over experience. Increasingly focused on his campaign, Trump pushed aides to continue scheduling massive rallies, even as his Democratic foes had begun canceling theirs.

But late Wednesday, the White House announced that a trip to Colorado and Nevada had been cancelled.

But he's still bragging...it's just now about the size of the crowd he WOULD have had.

I just checked on this Twitter account. He's retweeting all the CDC, Medicare administration and HHS recommendations and warnings now. Or Dan Scavino, his digital communications director is doing it on Trump's account.

[T]he Trump campaign believes that scuttling normal political activity benefits Biden, who tends to draw small rally crowds and has had some eyebrow-raising moments when interacting with voters.

They're probably right.