The coronavirus outbreak has resulted in economic devastation, thousands of deaths, overwhelmed hospital systems, and a jarring end to daily life as we previously knew it. But for our Showman-in-Chief, there’s at least been one silver lining. In the absence of his usual campaign rallies, President Donald Trump has used the deadly pandemic as an opportunity to deliver free-wheeling remarks to a captive American public through his daily press briefings, at which the president spews misinformation, contradicts himself, pushes unproven medical treatments, criticizes governors, blames the Obama administration for his administration’s faults, bashes the press, makes empty promises, downplays the severity of the outbreak, praises his administration’s often-inept response to the coronavirus—and then brags about getting Bachelor finale-sized ratings. The president’s briefings, which have included comments that range from misleading to downright dangerous, have understandably garnered criticism as a result, with some networks now cutting away from the briefings or fact-checking them in real-time to counter the president’s misinformation. And according to the New York Times, the critiques of the president’s daily performances aren’t just coming from the other side of the aisle.

One day after the right-leaning Wall Street Journal editorial board came out against Trump’s briefings, which they write “are now all about the President,” the Times reported that a number of GOP allies and advisers of the president would really prefer that he stepped back from the free-wheeling pressers. Republicans in the White House and Congress are “worried” about the briefings and “believe the briefings are hurting the president more than helping him,” describing the president’s daily diatribes “as a kind of original sin from which all of his missteps flow.” Trump “sometimes drowns out his own message,” Senator Lindsey Graham told the Times. (“Any suggestion that President Trump is struggling on tone or message is completely false. During these difficult times, Americans are receiving comfort, hope and resources from their president, as well as their local officials, and Americans are responding in unprecedented ways,” White House spokesman Judd Deere rebutted in a statement to the Times.)

Many Republicans are hoping that Trump will limit his briefings as a result and get going on some actual work, like taking aggressive action to stave off the looming recession and perhaps even working with predecessors like former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush on a more unified, coordinated response effort. As Americans clamor for more trustworthy information from White House public health experts Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, the Times reports that some Republicans believe that the health experts or Vice President Mike Pence should be taking more of a leading role instead of the president, who has a tendency to sideline the medical experts or openly contradict what they say. (“I’m not a doctor. But I have common sense,” Trump proclaimed at a press briefing Sunday.) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell privately pushed Trump to let Fauci and Birx be the “face of the response” as the pandemic got underway, the Times notes, and one senior official in the administration told the outlet they were hoping to see Pence become the new “M.C.” of the briefings, as the former Indiana governor “projects more empathy than the president, rarely makes mistakes and ... has a better grasp on the details of the response.”

Trump, however, hasn’t exactly been taking these suggestions to heart, as the criticism-averse president naturally prefers ratings and attention over what might actually be a strategically better approach. The Times reports that Trump has told aides he “relishes the free television time and boffo ratings that come with his appearances,” and sees the daily briefings as his chance to stick it to the ‘Fake News’ media and “put forth his version of events” that aren’t filtered by a critical press. But there’s real fear inside Trumpworld that the president’s damaging and error-filled briefings—and refusal to forge any appearance of political unity during a fraught time—will ultimately hurt the president at the ballot box and deliver a win to former Vice President Joe Biden. The president hasn’t enjoyed the same approval-rating bumps that have been afforded to many governors and health experts like Fauci, and Trump’s recent attacks on Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, advisers fear, may have cost him in a critical swing state. “He can’t escape his instincts, his desire to put people down, like Mitt Romney, or to talk about his ratings,” former Representative Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican, told the Times. “That’s why he’s not getting the George W. Bush post-9/11 treatment. A leader in this sort of crisis should have a 75-to-80-percent approval rating.”