Trump had a coronavirus truce with Democrats. Thanks to Fox News, that's now over

'We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself'

For a while, it seemed like Trump was becoming worthy of the 'wartime president' title (EPA)

In recent days, President Trump has cast himself as a "wartime president" leading the US into battle against an "invisible enemy” — while at the same time allowing governors in hard-hit states to run the show. Trump has spoken of Democrats like New York's Andrew Cuomo as allies in the "war" against Covid-19, following a strategy mapped out by his "war cabinet," also known as the President's Coronavirus Task Force.

Though he initially tempered on-camera praise for some governors' efforts with subsequent Twitter-borne insults, he continued to maintain an uneasy alliance with those across the aisle as the nation's financial markets had their worst week since 1929, and the number of American cases grew to over 30,000.

Moreover, Trump has — albeit reluctantly — acknowledged the necessity of stay-at-home orders and other social distancing measures recommended by experts like CDC Director Robert Redfield and Dr Anthony Fauci.

According to sources with knowledge of president's thinking, his generally magnanimous tone towards these prominent Democrats and the same sorts of career civil servants he's spent most of his term in office maligning as the "deep state" is the result of a belated realization. He now sees that the inaction which marked the first few months of the pandemic would not reflect well on him if state and local officials' actions contrasted significantly with the tone coming out of the White House.

As a result, this uneasy nonaggression pact with his adversaries has allowed both the president and public health experts to tout the stay-at-home orders, school closures, and event cancelations which have spread across the United States.

But now multiple Trumpworld figures say such strategies may need to remain in place for longer than the initial "15 days to slow the spread" recommended by the CDC. That’s left the president restless and ever more concerned about his own re-election prospects.

As of Monday morning, Trump appeared to be discarding the advice of his "field generals" in favor of a peripheral figure in his Fox News kitchen cabinet, ex-David Cameron adviser Steve Hilton.

Hilton, who has spent the three most recent years in exile from UK Conservative politics hosting a weekly show on the president's favorite channel, caught Trump's attention during his Sunday night broadcast by leveling a broadside against Anthony Fauci. Earlier, Fauci had shrugged off criticism about potentially overreacting to Covid-19 in a recent interview by telling his interlocutor: “I like it when people think I’m overreacting because that means we’re doing it just right."

Unimpressed by the world-famous virologist, Hilton opined: “Well, that’s easy for him to say! He’ll still have a job at the end of this, whatever happens. Our ruling class and their TV mouthpieces whipping up fear over this virus, they can afford an indefinite shutdown. Working Americans can’t, they’ll be crushed by it. You know that famous phrase, ‘The cure is worse than the disease’? That is exactly the territory we are hurting towards.” Hilton continued on to say that a "total economic shutdown" of the US would "kill people.”

Not long after, Trump issued an all-caps tweet echoing Hilton's sentiments.

“WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!” he wrote.

The next morning, the president retweeted a bunch of random Twitter accounts echoing the same sentiment, which National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow praised him for during an appearance on Fox News.

"The president is right. The cure can't be worse than the disease. And we're going to have to make some difficult tradeoffs," said Kudlow, an ex-CNBC pundit who, unlike most other NEC directors, isn't a trained economist.

Yale Medical School psychiatrist Dr Bandy Lee explained that Trump wants the initial 15-day period to be enough, and so he will declare it to be so because the "magical thinking" he engages in prevents him from seeing the consequences of sending Americans back to work prematurely.

"He can't see the consequences of his actions or the benefit of intervention… so he's going to do whatever he can to undermine it and stop this cure," she said. "He's not dwelling in reality at all."

It appears Trump is now preparing to turn against his own advisers and go to battle against the same governors who have taken charge in the fight against the pandemic. For this wartime president, it seems, the truce was temporary.