The week when everything changed for Trump

It’s as though in January 2017, Donald Trump was given a shiny, new cars and truck. The very best, most lovely automobile the world has ever seen. And in July 2020, the president made an essential discovery about it.

It has a reverse equipment.

It was an additional on the cars and truck he never believed he ‘d need – and certainly never ever planned to utilize. But on Monday, he put the car into reverse, and battle as he may with the gearstick and clutch, he now can’t stop the blasted thing from reversing.

Or to alter the metaphor – and borrow the language utilized today by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to explain his Labour opponent – from the president today there have actually been more flip-flops than Bournemouth beach.

Just to evaluate, masks – which the president utilized to deride as “political correctness” – are now an act of patriotism, and need to constantly be worn when social distancing is difficult. Coronavirus, which till just recently was being described in most instances as a bad case of the sniffles, is now something entirely more serious – and it is going to get even worse prior to it gets better.

Two weeks ago the president was firmly insisting that all schools had to reopen, or he would remove their financing. He’s now saying that, for some of the worst hit cities, that would not be suitable – and appears far more compassionate towards moms and dads wrestling with the decision about whether to permit their children resume in school education.

And the really big U-turn came last night on the Republican politician Convention in Jacksonville, Florida.

The president likes a crowd. A raucous, adoring crowd. The original strategy had been to hold the occasion in Charlotte, North Carolina. When the guv of that state said there would have to be social distancing, the president went ballistic, went after the guv, and announced huffily that the Republicans would go somewhere else. Jacksonville would be the venue for the tickertape and hoopla, and countless cheering and whooping Republicans.

Other Than it won’t be now.

It was a sensational and uncomfortable reverse, and one the president made with the heaviest of hearts.

The statements have come on 3 successive nights of revitalised White Home coronavirus rundowns. In this version with the president flying solo, and not flanked by his medical consultants. They have also been much more disciplined than when the president would invest a couple of hours at the lectern, musing on anything and everything – most memorably on whether disinfectant and sunshine must be injected into the body to deal with coronavirus.

I was at that remarkable briefing with the president, and I was back once again for his rundown this Wednesday. This time around he was in and out in less than ha