Thousands of Americans are dead – but Trump is finally getting serious about coronavirus because it’s killing his election campaign

Amid sinking poll ratings, the US president has changed his mind on masks... and rediscovered his political touch

For those hoping to watch Donald Trump blunder his way to a crushing defeat in November, I have bad news. Sleepy Donald has woken. Somehow, a few facts and the cold reality of the coronavirus pandemic have penetrated that miasma of wishful thinking and fantasy.

Maybe he’s getting better advice. Maybe he’s just listening for a change. Either way, Trump appears to have realised that ignoring the needless deaths of thousands of Americans isn’t the best way to hang on to the White House.

He’s changed his mind on masks. He’s changed his mind on the virus. He’s rediscovered his political touch.

It is quite a moment. Only a few weeks ago, the US president seemed to think that if he just disbanded the coronavirus taskforce and ended the Covid-19 press conferences then infections would cease. It was a spectacular confusion of cause and effect, but it was good enough for him. There was the bizarre business about injecting yourself with bleach, to the bemusement of the world. Trump said the coronavirus crisis was just a “hoax” made up by Democrats and his many media enemies. Yet it had wrecked the economy – which had never been doing better, according to Trump.

The president tried to make himself out to be a victim, the insurgent, the people’s candidate again for the forgotten. But he’d been in power for years and it wasn’t the Democrats or CNN allowing people to die. Even blaming the Chinese for the “kung flu” couldn’t work; it really doesn’t matter so much when you’re on a ventilator, or, worse, unable to get access to one when you need it.

The Biden campaign successfully weaponised presidential denial and complacency and Trump started to slip behind in the polls. He was on track to lose. It became impossible, even for Trump, to ignore the way Covid-19 was tearing through swing states in the south and west.

On Fox News on Sunday, Trump called the latest election data “fake polls”, and reminded the nation that he’d been trailing Hillary Clinton before he won in 2016. But you wonder whether even he realised that just because you can successfully come from behind as the challenger, doesn’t mean you can do the same as the incumbent.

The Biden campaign (via a Super Pac) put it succinctly in a tweet: “Trump refused to take the threat of the coronavirus seriously, now he won’t take responsibility as his administration has been totally unprepared for this crisis.” Trump was being made to own the crisis. The super-spreading rallies weren’t working.

So now comes a new Trump. Behind the mask, so to speak.

This one tells Americans a hard truth: “It will probably get worse before it gets better.” He wants Americans, including his militantly anti-mask base, to take to face coverings because, “whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact, they’ll have an effect and we need everything we can get.”

Trump now thinks a mask demonstrates patriotism, like his own adorned with the presidential crest, or Mike Pompeo’s stars and stripes number. For a germophobe such as Trump, wearing a mask probably comes more naturally than he’d admit. What he says is that he’s “getting used to the mask”.

In yesterday’s admissions, there was even a moment of rare humility – “something I don’t like saying about things, but that’s the way it is”. In due course, that moment may allow the president to blame people for not following his advice when the death toll continues to climb. It is still a risky tactic.

The point is that Donald Trump is neither mad nor stupid enough to lose this election through arrogance and negligence. It may already be too late for him: many Americans will have given up on him, and some of his staunch supporters will bemused, though consistency was never his greatest virtue. But the Trump fightback has started, and his opponents shouldn’t underestimate him again. After all, he does like to win.