AP’s Jonathan Lemire: Trump Believes the Answer to Any Public Crisis Is ‘More Trump’

EXCERPT:

LEMIRE: “There's been allegations from Trump advisers that some of the health experts are members of the so-called deep state and are looking to get President Trump or at least move too slowly for his liking. This was forced, pushed through, he was able to make the announcement himself from the White House briefing room yesterday, and the timing, of course, raises eyebrows. This is on the eve of the Republican Convention, a convention that he goes into down, as we just went through the polls, down by some significant margins in a lot of these battleground states, and he’s trying to change momentum here. He’s going to appear all four nights of the convention, his aides are making the bet that that's what he wants, that Donald Trump believes himself, that the answer to any sort of public relations crisis is more Donald Trump. And now he goes into it with bad stories, with distractions swirling, and I know we’ll get to later the leaked audio from his sister, the sudden resignation of the senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, there's a lot of distractions right now around the President, but he is betting that this Coronavirus therapeutic, the blood plasma treatment is a good sign heading into the conventions. And yes, absolutely, they’re telling lawmakers, they're telling allies that they do believe they’ll have some sort of vaccine announcement before the election and that could be what's salvaged Donald Trump’s chances."