In short: It’s only okay to leak criticism of Trump for things that are perceived to harm him politically in the most superficial of ways, never mind the danger that his failings continue to pose to the country.

AD

That Trump’s magical reality-bending powers are failing him is borne out by a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finding that only 44 percent of Americans approve of his handling of coronavirus, versus 55 percent who disapprove, a sizable swing from last week. A new CBS poll also finds this approval sliding into negative territory, as did this week’s CNN poll.

AD

It turns out some Republicans — and some of Trump’s own advisers — agree with this, and are deeply worried about it.

A remarkably revealing New York Times report details these concerns, with a focus on how Trump’s daily coronavirus briefings are working against him:

As unemployment soars and the death toll skyrockets, and new polls show support for the president’s handling of the crisis sagging, White House allies and Republican lawmakers increasingly believe the briefings are hurting the president more than helping him. Many view the sessions as a kind of original sin from which all of his missteps flow, once he gets through his prepared script and turns to his preferred style of extemporaneous bluster and invective.

The Trump campaign’s internal polls show “he has mostly lost the initial bump he received early in the crisis,” the Times reports, and advisers want these briefings limited. Republican Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) claims that in these briefings, Trump “drowns out his own message.” Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.) says “they’re going on too long.”

AD

Meanwhile, one top political adviser to Trump tells the Times that the briefings are handing likely opponent Joe Biden ammunition, and says Vice President Pence should be the frontman because he “projects more empathy,” as the Times puts it.

AD

Reports like this should be read in part as an effort by those who willingly spill behind-the-scenes thinking to prod Trump to course-correct for his own good.

But what’s truly revealing here is what these advisers don’t say in this regard about these briefings, and more broadly, what they can’t say about his need to course-correct.

What Trump’s advisers can’t say

They don’t fault Trump for furiously refusing to acknowledge the substantive findings of his own administration that hospital administrators around the country are in desperate need of more medical supplies, due in large part to his administration’s failures to manage supply chains.

AD

They don’t fault Trump for speciously claiming that states like New York “had a chance” to secure more lifesaving ventilators, thus deflecting blame for his own role in these shortages.

AD

They don’t fault Trump for perpetually dissembling to the media about our calamitous testing failures. Trump claims he inherited an obsolete testing regimen (there were no tests for coronavirus at first, and it was largely on him to coordinate development of one), and he misleadingly says we’re doing more testing than any other country (what matters is per capita testing).

All these things happened at his briefings. And they’re far more objectionable and destructive to the country than the abrasive and unempathetic tone Trump adopts. They constitute an active effort to dodge responsibility for his own substantive failures, which is part and parcel of an ongoing refusal to course-correct in ways that could save untold lives.

Trump’s failures are dangerous and ongoing

All these failures continue right now. When Trump refuses to acknowledge the existence of equipment shortages, and dodges blame for failing to deliver ventilators, those mask an ongoing refusal to take full charge of medical supply chains to address those shortages, which could prove disastrous.

AD

AD

And when Trump dissembles to conceal the failure to ramp up testing, that not only dodges blame for missteps that catastrophically allowed coronavirus to rage out of control. It also helps him dodge responsibility for an ongoing and forward-looking failure.

Specifically, the lack of a coordinated response has led to missing parts for tests in the present and could complicate efforts to expand testing later to the degree needed to reopen society. This dodging makes course-correction through a more coordinated response less likely here, too.

Obviously Trump’s advisers are going to be reluctant to leak criticism of his substantive failures. But the point here is that those failures, and not his tone at his briefings, are the ones that are likely to do him real political damage.

AD

Yet for precisely this reason, these are the failures that Trump’s advisers are more constrained from leaking about, because admitting to the truth about them would do him far more political damage, and rightly so.

AD

The truly depraved nature of this problem is captured by this dispiritingly candid line from the Times report:

Advisers are torn between knowing that a less abrasive approach would help Mr. Trump and their awareness that he can’t tolerate criticism, regardless of the setting.

Trump’s advisers can risk provoking his narcissistic intolerance of criticism when it comes to superficial, theatrical matters. But they can’t risk provoking it over matters of life and death for the country, in a manner that might lead him to learn from those mistakes and save untold numbers of Americans lives.

That’s something Trump’s narcissism truly cannot handle.

AD