WASHINGTON — Reeling from the fallout of another crisis of his own creation, President Donald Trump was trying to move past revelations that he was determined to play down the threat of the coronavirus as he headed for a rally in battleground Michigan Thursday.
But the president was facing renewed pushback from local leaders worried that his rallies are growing in size and flouting public health guidelines intended to halt the spread of the virus. This week, the state of Nevada became the first to scuttle Trump’s plans for rallies initially set for Las Vegas and Reno. Michigan’s Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also raised alarms about Thursday’s event.
The back-and-forth comes as the White House is grappling with fallout from a new book by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward. In a series of interviews with Woodward, Trump spoke frankly about the dangers posed by the virus — even as he downplayed them publicly — and admitted he had tried to mislead the public. The book has refocused attention on Trump’s handling of the virus, a subject he has tried to shift away from less than two months before Election Day.
In a burst of tweets Thursday morning, Trump defended his comments admitting that he had been warned about the danger of the virus.