“I think, for a while, there was some degree of harmony in the conservative press,” he observed, pointing to the potential of Bernie Sanders as the Democratic presidential nominee bringing consensus to the movement prior to Super Tuesday. “If you're debating policy, then it looks like everybody’s pretty much on the same page, because whatever people think of Trump, they also don’t like socialism to a great degree.”

But over the next two weeks, that future shattered with the one-two punch of Joe Biden trouncing every candidate during the next 22 primaries, placing Sanders' campaign on death watch, and the sudden, complete shutdown of Italy over coronavirus fears, leading to Trump’s decision to shut down travel between much of Europe and the U.S. And now much of the nation is shutting down to save itself from the rapidly spreading outbreak.

While they applauded Trump’s earlier decision to ban travel from China, they still could not overlook the lack of testing and the CDC’s inability to mount a strong prevention campaign against the virus, and some criticized Trump’s initial messaging.

“Trump was comparing flu statistics to coronavirus statistics,” said Chamberlain. “Well, that’s the same mistake that people make when they say, ‘Why do you care more about terrorism? Terrorism kills so many fewer people in car accidents every year.’ The answer is, ‘Because if something goes really wrong in terrorism, they could do unbelievably dramatic damage.’ Same logic here.”



There was a consensus among Trump’s supporters that the crisis was precipitated by the two things that Trump had long railed against: open borders and the over-reliance on Chinese manufacturing. With the coronavirus, argued Chamberlain, Trump was proven right: Lax border security had allowed the virus to spread, and the shutdown of Chinese factories, particularly the ones that manufactured medical supplies and medicine, hobbled America’s ability to fight it.

“If Trump wants to pursue his normal, original nationalist agenda, there's nothing about the coronavirus crisis that would preclude him from doing so. If anything, it is evident that his agenda is the right one to pursue.”

While coronavirus presented a custom-built argument for economic nationalism, it was not the argument that Trump initially made — something that did not escape Mandel, who was flabbergasted that Trump did not spin himself as a “prophet” and instead tried to downplay it. “When the president had a crisis that hit that would have, theoretically, been designed perfectly for the nationalist argument, he didn't reach for it. So maybe he doesn't really believe it.”

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Trump’s Friday afternoon speech in the Rose Garden, in which Trump announced a national emergency and displayed several private corporations to aid the CDC’s response, heartened his supporters, who applauded the fact that there was, at least, a conservative-friendly plan to combat the virus: a website for people seeking information about COVID-19, a public-private partnership with several corporations to fight the disease and, most importantly, the declaration of a national emergency, freeing up billions in federal funding. (The website, however, was not quite what Trump had initially sold: What was initially early discussions about a Bay Area pilot program for health care workers run by a Google-affiliated startup was inflated to a Google website with 1,700 employees that could help people self-screen for COVID-19 symptoms.)

To be sure, the health of the economy is indeed one factor in Trump’s re-election — a bar, Kassam pointed out, that the Trump campaign set for itself by touting the strength of the economy for the past three years as proof positive of his leadership. But most would forgive him if he didn’t restore the Dow to its recent soaring heights, as long as the markets were stable.

Fournier pointed to Trump’s post-address market rebound as proof that Trump was truly in control. “Today it’s a good day in America. Declaring a national emergency, releasing those funds, working with these other companies — this is the holistic solution,” he said.

Mandel doubted that Trump would lose the percentage of his base that would be with him no matter what during the coronavirus pandemic, but cautioned that Trump could not rely on press conferences and bolstering the economy forever.

“There’s the public health thing, and then there’s the economy part of it, and everybody should really be caring about the public health thing the most, but even he needs to presumably get some credit if the economy doesn’t tank,” he said. “And if it looks like he tried to save the economy at the expense of the public health aspect of it — if voters think that’s what he did, and also he failed at both — then yeah, you can imagine that it’s absolutely a real threat to his reelection. And again, he doesn't have Bernie to lean back on.”