Trump threatens to sue campaign manager during heated call over ending coronavirus briefings
President Donald Trump reportedly lashed out at his campaign manager Brad Parscale during a phone call last Friday, April 24, after his poll numbers showed alarming fall and the chances of his winning the November re-election looked less in favor. Trump even threatened to sue Parscale during the conversation.
The Trump campaign has steadily lost the edge it had over the opponents in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic that has affected over a million people and killed nearly 61,000. The economy has taken a massive hit with more than 26 million people losing their jobs. More than half of the people of America now have a negative take on Trump’s handling of the crisis, a new poll has shown.
Reports from CNN and the New York Times have said that Parscale, along with Ronna Romney McDaniel — the chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) — told Trump to scale back his frequent coronavirus press briefings as they were damaging his electoral chances in the swing states. The president was not impressed with the advice and tore into Parscale over the plummeting numbers, as the latter shot back: “I love you, too”, according to a report in the NYT.
The president’s press talks over the pandemic have not produced the desired results. The raucous events have seen more controversial moments than not with either Trump tearing into the media or any other critic, overruling the opinions of specialists or even coming up with bizarre ideas to tackle the disease, like putting sunlight in the body or injecting disinfectants that visibly left the specialist members of his task force visibly shocked.
The Republican camp is not convinced with Trump’s response to the pandemic. One Republican member close to the White House told CNN that Trump is “p***ed” because he knows that he has messed up things in his briefings. It was just a day before he floated the disinfectant theory on April 23 that both Parscale and McDaniel, along with some other top advisors, brought to Trump’s notice the internal campaign numbers and RNC data. The numbers showed Trump was in a losing position in battleground states against Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee. Even thoughTrump mocked the former vice president for staying indoors in Delaware from where he is campaigning virtually, the president's advisors asked him to scale down his controversial press briefings since they threaten his chances in the swing states, the CNN reported.
Trump has made his press briefings less intense
Trump, who prefers to act according to his own instincts, did not care and went ahead with his press call on April 23. After his heated talks with Parscale on April 24, Trump had a short briefing and didn’t take questions. He also skipped briefing the press over the same weekend. On Monday, April 27, he had a press briefing but the affair was less combative.
Over the next two days, Trump’s press briefing was limited to a small number of reporters who follow him each day. Trump and Parscale have also patched up since then, the CNN report added.
It was also reported that Parscale, who was associated with Trump’s 2016 campaign and became the manager of his re-election campaign in February 2018, has been social distancing from his residence in South Florida but flew to Washington this week, to meet Trump.
In March, Trump had hoped to reopen the economy by the Easter holidays but his advisors made him reconsider his idea, given the backlash it would face amid the pandemic.