After months of insisting on a big convention, Trump pulls the plug in the face of rising coronavirus caseloads.
President Trump, citing safety concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic, abruptly canceled the “big crowded” portion of the Republican National Convention that had been scheduled for Jacksonville, Fla., in late August, reversing his insistence on a high-profile speech to a full arena.
Trump’s reversal, after weeks of insisting on an in-person convention, appeared to catch campaign officials by surprise. Almost an hour passed before they issued a statement praising the decision. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had called the convention plans a “challenging” situation, putting off a decision on whether he would attend. More than half a dozen of his Republican colleagues, including several of the chamber’s oldest members, had already said they would not go.
“There’s nothing more crowded than a convention … and even though you try to keep people away from each other, it’s just not that kind of a thing,” he said.That, of course, was precisely the argument that North Carolina officials made last month when they insisted on health precautions in Charlotte, where Trump was originally scheduled to hold his convention. The president rejected those restrictions and, citing frustration with North Carolina Gov.
Trump’s reluctant decision to scrap most of the festivities is the latest sign that he is accepting, at least for now, that the virus is fundamentally changing American life and that the risk of spread needs to be taken more seriously. This week, he posted a picture of himself on Twitter wearing a mask and has begun telling Americans to follow suit, though he did not wear one during Thursday’s briefing.
Many delegates were reluctant to come to Jacksonville for a variety of reasons, the person involved in planning said, raising the prospect that Trump might not have gotten the large crowd he sought.
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