The president initially scoffed at the coronavirus. Now he seems convinced he can lead – and secure four more years in November

Bill Clinton used to lament that his time as US president was broadly peaceful, and lacked a historic test of his mettle. Donald Trump believes that his moment has arrived: a crisis on a par with leading a nation at war.

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“I view it as a, in a sense, a wartime president,” he said at the White House this week as he belatedly comprehended the epic scale of the coronavirus pandemic, which in the US alone has infected more than 19,000 people and killed more than 200. “I mean, that’s what we’re fighting.”

The world witnessed two Trumps in often jarring conflict last week, sometimes in the same breath. One was aspiring to be statesmanlike, reassuring an anguished public and mobilizing the awesome power of the American government. The other was more familiar: belligerent, anti-science, racially divisive, airing grievances and resentments and blaming everyone but himself.

Yet from the blur something else was coming into focus. Having procrastinated at the outbreak of the pandemic, this was the week Trump regained his footing and began to thread a narrative aimed at his re-election.

The bid for four more years of power includes muscular language, projecting himself as a wartime leader, a dose of nationalism in stricter border controls and references to the “Chinese virus”, and a blitzkrieg at his old foes in the media.

Although he can no longer hold rambunctious campaign rallies, Trump is instead relishing the medium he knows best by holding televised daily briefings from the White House. Whereas for a while he was forced to play second fiddle to the Democratic presidential primary, now rival Joe Biden is forced to host virtual campaign events – plagued by technical glitches - and Trump is back at the centre of events.

Steve Bannon, a former White House chief strategist, said: “We are at war, and now by necessity he is a ‘wartime’ president. Churchill rose to the occasion and secured his place in history. Trump’s moment is here, to grasp or to lose.”

So far there is little sign that even this trauma, which is shutting down much of the country, has shifted America’s political divide.

Democrats have eviscerated the president for downplaying the threat of the virus – Despite Trump’s vague and overoptimistic claims, America is still woefully lacking in testing kits and equipment , and its notoriously flawed healthcare system could soon be overwhelmed.

However, as in so many other political flashpoints over the past three years, Republicans remain loyal to Trump, and there is no evidence that his “base” is deserting him. An ABC News/Ipsos poll released on Friday found that 55% of respondents approve of the president’s management of the coronavirus crisis, while 43% disapprove. This represented a switch from a week earlier when only 43% approved and 54% disapproved.

The finding may reflect a discernible change in Trump’s attitude, starting on Friday 13 March when he declared a national emergency. He then expanded travel restrictions on Europe, Canada and Mexico, issued guidelines against group gatherings of more than 10 people, signaled his support for sending cheques to affected Americans and invoked the Defense Production Act to mass produce equipment.

There was also a change in tone, as he tried to sound more sombre and serious – with mixed success – and alluded to the fight against Hitler. “Every generation of Americans has been called to make shared sacrifices for the good of the nation,” he said on Wednesday, citing the teenage volunteers, factory workers and shipbuilders of the second world war.

“And now it’s our time. We must sacrifice together because we are all in this together and we’ll come through together. It’s the invisible enemy.”

Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “It’s the sort of thing that will resonate with his supporters: strength, decisiveness and, let’s not forget, this came from a communist country.”

At first the concept of a microscopic “invisible enemy” did not fit the old Trump playbook that prefers to target people, often people of color. But in the past week he found a fix with some characteristic branding, “Chinese virus”, to constantly remind the public where the respiratory infection originated. On Thursday Trump even crossed out the word “corona” in his prepared remarks and hand wrote “Chinese” instead.

There was criticism of the term as a xenophobic ploy to fire up his “build the wall” support base.

Olsen said he would have awarded Trump a grade D two weeks ago but the president is now quickly waking up to reality. “This would be a test of any president and things can change as people rally round. We’ve got a test of the thesis of the anti-Trump and Never Trump crowd: they always told us when a true crisis came, he wouldn’t be able to handle it. Events will speak for themselves.”

If the number of deaths soars and the economy craters, Olsen noted, Trump is likely to lose in November. But if the opposite happens, “he’ll be able to say he was up to the test. In a sense, we’re at the roulette table and everything is on black and we don’t know where it’s going to land.”

The virus has scrambled Washington’s political order. The election has temporarily become a sideshow as Congress rushes through billions of dollars in stimulus to stave off a 1930s-style great depression. Senate Republicans, typically the party of small government, low taxes and rugged individualism, proposed a direct payment to Americans of up to $1,200.

Trump earned praise from Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governors of New York and California states respectively. Yet the president could not resist tweeting attacks at Cuomo and Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan. He played little part in negotiating with the Democratic-led House of Representatives, which impeached him a few months ago, dispatching the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, instead.

In the daily White House briefings the old Trump was never far away, with misleading claims, attempts to blame his predecessor and unhinged outbursts that probably had the career health professionals at his side inwardly cringing. On Friday a reporter asked the president for his message to Americans who are feeling scared. The reply was less than Churchillian: “I say that you’re a terrible reporter. That’s what I say. I think it’s a very nasty question and I think it’s a very bad signal that you’re putting out to the American people.”

Leon Panetta, a former defense secretary and director of the CIA, said: “He’s still wrapped up in the political traps that he constantly gets bound by as to the press and the Democrats and whoever else is out there who he tweets about. He’s still caught in that paralysis that prevents him, frankly, from really exercising the leadership that the country needs.”

Regarding Trump’s use of the phrase “Chinese virus”, Panetta added: “I have to believe that he continues to use that term as a way to appeal to his base as opposed to trying to exercise what I think would be more responsible leadership in acknowledging that what we’re now dealing with, whether he likes it or not, is the American virus.”

Trump has generally found bad publicity to be more useful than no publicity at all. The crisis has handed him a dominant national platform where Vice-President Mike Pence and other officials lavish him with praise. Biden, meanwhile, marked his latest victories in the Democratic primary race in a streamed video from his home in Wilmington, Delaware, speaking for six minutes in front of a black curtain with no audience.

Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “It’s perfectly conceivable Trump survives this and wins the election. If he can keep the death toll down, sell the idea that it could have been worse and show he was a volatile character who turned the corner in a crisis, it’s going to be hard for Biden to unseat him.

“Showing minimal compassion in the case of Donald Trump may be all he has to do to win in 2020.”

Should the coronavirus kill thousands and wreak economic destruction, however, voters may well turn to Barack Obama’s vice-president for steadiness and wisdom. Schiller said: “Biden is the epitome of the opposite of Trump in a crisis. If people are going to turn away from Trump, Biden is exactly the person they will go for.”

Panetta, who has endorsed Biden for president, believes this latter scenario will come to pass. He said: “History is not going to be kind with the fact that they knew about this pandemic going back a number of months and did very little to prepare the country to deal with it.”