The position of any Trump supporter, whether drool-besotted cult member or dispassionate ordinary citizen, regarding his demeanor, style and attitude has always been that those levels of consideration hadn't gotten in the way of a record of laudable policy moves, from judicial appointments to a Middle East policy centered on reaffirming a strong US-Israel alliance, to pulling out of the Paris climate accord, to a rebounding economy.
A lot of them even approved of his approach to the coronavirus pandemic in the spring and summer. Trump supporters tend to lean in favor of swiftly reopening the economies of the various states and being done with measures such as masks and social distancing. When, at the end of March, he expressed hope that churches across the nation could be packed for Easter, they defended it by stressing that it was a favorable alternative to a level of caution they saw as skittishness and out of step with the American character.
His rallies and fundraisers have famously been mask-and-distancing-free occasions. Attendees saw it as a source of pride.
This wasn't happenstance. It was the spreading into the larger society of a culture that prevailed within the administration, as we're now finding out:
The tight quarters of the West Wing were packed and busy. Almost no one wore masks. The rare officials who did, like Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser, were ridiculed by colleagues as alarmist.
President Trump at times told staff wearing masks in meetings to “get that thing off,” an administration official said. Everyone knew that Mr. Trump viewed masks as a sign of weakness, officials said, and that his message was clear. “You were looked down upon when you would walk by with a mask,” said Olivia Troye, a top aide on the coronavirus task force who resigned in August and has endorsed former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
In public, some of the president’s favorite targets were mask-wearing White House correspondents. “Would you take it off, I can hardly hear you,” Mr. Trump told Jeff Mason of Reuters in May, then mocked Mr. Mason for wanting “to be politically correct” when he refused.
It became a sign of being a team player to not wear a mask. Current press secretary Kayleigh McEnany's lack of a mask is widely seen as a gesture of loyalty.
Some have opted to bail, though:
Kevin Hassett was a top economic adviser to the president in May when he became one of the few to break the unwritten White House rules. In a television interview, he said that he found it “scary to go to work” and that “I think that I’d be a lot safer if I was sitting at home than I would be going to the West Wing.”
Mr. Hassett, who left the administration over the summer, told CNN on Friday that he was criticized at the time for publicly expressing concern.
“When I was in the White House, you know, I got a little bit of a flak for saying, ‘Hey, I understand the risks,’” he said.
Discontent is palpable now, though, which the president, his wife, RNC chair Rona McDaniel, campaign chair Bill Stepian and advisor Hope Hicks all testing positive:
. . . in Trumpworld, there was anger and internal frustrations over how the virus in general and the president’s infection in particular had been handled. Among White House staff and the re-election effort, some advisers were furious that Trump wasn’t talked out of attending a high-roller fundraiser at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club on Thursday night, after the White House already learned of his exposure to the virus, two administration officials said. The senior official was also exasperated that the way the White House bungled the information rollout in the past couple days left the administration wide-open to allegations of yet another disastrous cover-up.
“It’s just fuck-up after fuck-up,” said a senior administration official who works with the coronavirus task force. “I don’t have much more to add [beyond] that.”
The insertion of Scott Atlas into the administration's efforts to address the pandemic have exacerbated the chaos:
“He’s doing things that you would do if you wanted to tear apart the task force,” one senior Trump administration official, who works closely with the group, said of Atlas. “The president was already doing a fine job ignoring much of the counsel coming out of the task force, but [Atlas’s ascension] has made it even worse.”
This official referenced several times this summer, during which the United States had seen coronavirus surges in various areas, when Trump was being briefed on virus data or worsening situations, and would reply, “What does Scott have to say,” or “What does Scott think?”
Trump had told senior officials in recent weeks he doesn’t see Atlas on TV enough and wants him booked on more programs and cable-news shows representing the administration’s policies, said a source with direct knowledge of the president’s wishes. But even Fox News—whose airwaves initially drew Trump to Atlas—has grown wary of putting him on some programs, owing to his policy prescriptions that are deemed by many to be out-of-touch with mainstream scientific and public-health opinion.
So finally, the long-dismissed personal recklessness that is the Very Stable Genius's signature style has come to affect policy in a way that has immediate effects. The president is quarantined at Walter Reed four weeks out from an election, with a Supreme Court nominee awaiting hearings.
We were told not to worry about his demeanor and attitude even as he took over the Republican Party and made it beholden to him alone. Everything would be fine, because we'd get great policy.
That excuse for who he is through and through no longer washes.
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