Still, after Mr. Trump encouraged social distancing protests last weekend, Mr. Kemp’s plan to allow gyms, hair and nail salons, bowling alleys and tattoo parlors to reopen did not seem like a stretch. Those businesses were to reopen on Friday, and restaurants will be allowed to resume limited dine-in service on Monday. Movie theaters and other entertainment venues will also be allowed to reopen.

Mr. Kemp said the changes were crucial to helping business owners and employees get back to work. But they were roundly criticized by public health experts and mayors, including Atlanta’s, Keisha Lance Bottoms, who said she was not consulted about the plan — and argued that Georgia’s largest metropolis was not ready to open for business. Many of the cases in Georgia have been concentrated in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The state has more than 21,500 reported cases as of Thursday, with 872 deaths, according to state health data.

The president’s criticism did not cause Mr. Kemp to adjust his plan, but the opposition to the governor’s order now puts Mr. Trump in the same camp as liberal Democrats like Ms. Bottoms. The president’s comments on Wednesday are just one shard of his seemingly contradictory series of positions regarding when to relax social distancing measures and reopen American businesses.

Last Thursday, Mr. Trump announced a careful, phased system for states to follow as they moved closer to normalcy. The next day, he unleashed a series of tweets encouraging protesters to “liberate” three states — Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia — where Democratic governors have imposed strict social distancing restrictions.

The president has also said in the past that he has “total” authority to impose his will on the states, a position he later appeared to reverse. Then his attorney general, William P. Barr, said that the federal government might sue states that put in place measures the White House disagrees with.

The result is that governors, even those allied with Mr. Trump, are all but forced to pay close attention to the administration’s guidance on the timing of opening up their economies.

And the guidance, critics say, is all over the place.

“The message is inconsistent,” said Jim Hood, the former attorney general of Mississippi who ran for governor as a Democrat last year. “The one thing that isn’t inconsistent is what the doctors are saying.”