HOME ALONE AT THE WHITE HOUSE, A SOUR PRESIDENT, WITH TV HIS CONSTANT COMPANION

THE CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK NEWS

This article was posted on The New York Times.

It posted here by Farah Hanim for educational purposes only.

By Katie Rogers and Annie Karni

As his administration grapples with reopening the economy and responding to the coronavirus crisis,

President Trump worries about his re-election and how the news media is portraying him.

President Trump arrives in the Oval Office these days as late as noon when he is usually in a sour mood

after his morning marathon of television. He has been up in the White House master bedroom as early as 5 a.m.

watching Fox News, then CNN, with a dollop of MSNBC thrown in for rage viewing. He makes calls with the

TV on in the background, his routine since he first arrived at the White House. But now there are differences.

The president sees few allies no matter which channel he clicks. He is angry even with Fox,

an old security blanket, for not portraying him as he would like to be seen. And he makes time to watch Gov.

Andrew M. Cuomo’s briefings from New York, closely monitoring for a sporadic compliment or snipe.

Confined to the White House, the president is isolated from the supporters, visitors, travel, and golf that

once entertained him, according to more than a dozen administration officials and close advisers who spoke

about Mr. Trump’s strange new life. He is tested weekly, as is Vice President Mike Pence, for Covid-19, the

disease caused by the coronavirus.

The economy Mr. Trump’s main case for re-election has imploded. News coverage of his handling

of the coronavirus has been overwhelmingly negative as Democrats have condemned him for a lack of empathy,

honesty, and competence in the face of a pandemic. Even Republicans have criticized Mr. Trump’s briefings as

long-winded and his rough handling of critics as unproductive.

His own internal polling shows him sliding in some swing states, a major reason he declared a temporary halt

to the issuance of green cards to those outside the United States. The executive order watered down with

loopholes after an uproar from business groups was aimed at pleasing his political base, people close to him

said and was the kind of move Mr. Trump makes when things feel out of control. Friends who have spoken to

him said he seemed unsettled and worried about losing the election.

But the president’s primary focus, advisers said, is assessing how his performance on the virus is measured in

the news media, and the extent to which history will blame him.

“He’s frustrated,” said Stephen Moore, an outside economic adviser to Mr. Trump who was the president’s pick

to sit on the Federal Reserve Board before his history of sexist comments and lack of child support payments

surfaced. “It’s like being hit with a meteor.”

Mr. Trump frequently vents about how he is portrayed. He was enraged by an article this month in which his

health secretary, Alex M. Azar II, was said to have warned Mr. Trump in January about the possibility of a

pandemic. Mr. Trump was upset that he was being blamed while Mr. Azar was portrayed in a more favorable

light, aides said. The president told friends that he assumed Mr. Azar was working the news media to try to

save his own reputation at the expense of Mr. Trump’s.

Hogan Gidley, a White House spokesman, disputed that the president’s focus was on his news coverage,

but said in a statement that “President Trump’s highest priority is the health and safety of the American people.”

Aides said the president’s low point was in mid-March, when Mr. Trump, who had dismissed the virus as

“one person coming in from China” and no worse than the flu, saw deaths and infections from Covid-19 rising

daily. Mike Lindell, a Trump donor campaign surrogate and the chief executive of MyPillow, visited the

White House later that month and said the president seemed so glum that Mr. Lindell pulled out his phone to

show him a text message from a Democratic-voting friend of his who thought Mr. Trump was doing a good job.

Mr. Lindell said Mr. Trump perked up after hearing the praise. “I just wanted to give him a little confidence,”

Mr. Lindell said.