Trump's reelection plans hit coronavirus wall

He's been an unconventional political candidate, an unconventional American president and now is facing an unpredictable future.

President Donald Trump is confronting the most dangerous crisis a U.S. leader has faced this century as the coronavirus spreads and a once-vibrant economy falters. As the turmoil deepens, the choices he makes in the critical weeks ahead will shape his reelection prospects, his legacy and the character of the nation.

Entering the 2016 presidential race, gliding down the escalator of Trump Tower with wife Melania, Trump swept away a record number of political rivals to capture the Republican party's nomination.

With a message strong on law and order, Trump invoked his now familiar mantra, "make America great again," as he accepted his party's nomination at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

The president was banking on a booming American economy and highlighting fighting crime to win him into a second term.

But Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden are now staring down a coronavirus pandemic that has turned 2020 campaign logistics on their head.

"When an incumbent presidents on the ballot, the election is usually a referendum on that person," says the University of Virginia's Center for Politics' Kyle Kondik. Kondik says the Trump campaign has been working to recast the November vote as a choice between two candidates, rather than that referendum.

From the earliest days of the Trump administration, the country has been roiled by protests. In January 2017 reaction was swift after the president imposed a travel ban and pushed ahead with his plans to build a wall along the southern border with Mexico.

The president has been able to count on domestic successes, including appointing two conservative justices to the Supreme Court in his first term.

But as he pushed his way onto the foreign stage, Trump has met few successes.

Trump, who in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, was playing up his "friendship" and positive relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping in an apparent effort to preserve trade negotiations with the Chinese, now seems to have signed off on an all-out assault on China.

After initially touting his strong relationship with Kim Jung Un, with high-profile meetings in Singapore and Vietnam, North Korea in June officially ended its diplomatic relationship with the U.S. Efforts to get Pyongyang to relinquish nuclear weapons did not work.

For the past three years, the administration has careered between Trump's attempts to curry favor and friendship with Vladimir Putin and longstanding deep-seated concerns about the Russian president's intentions.

Suspicions about Trump and Russia go back to his 2016 campaign. His appeal to Moscow to dig up his opponent's emails, his plaintive suggestions that Russia and the United States should be friends and a series of contacts between his advisers and Russians raised questions of impropriety that led to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Mueller, along with the U.S. intelligence community, did find that Russia interfered with the election, to sow chaos and also help Trump's campaign. But Trump has cast doubt on those findings, most memorably in a 2018 appearance on stage with Putin in Helsinki.

Trump's approach to Russia was at center stage in the impeachment proceedings, when U.S. officials testified that the president demanded political favors from Ukraine in return for military assistance it needed to combat Russian aggression. But the issue ended up as a largely partisan exercise, with House Democrats voting to impeach Trump and Senate Republicans voting to acquit.

But, as the University of Virginia's Center for Politics' Kondik says "for all of the crazy things that have gone on and all the president's crazy statements and impeachment,"  it is "coronavirus is the most significant thing that's happened in the Trump presidency. "

That grim realities is testing Trump's leadership and political survival skills unlike any challenge he has faced in office, including the special counsel investigation and the impeachment probe that imperiled his presidency.

The early fallout from the coronavirus pandemic is sobering.

The Trump campaign 2020 slogan — "Keep America Great" — is already painfully disconnected from the reality on the ground in most states now fighting massive unemployment and health concerns.

The U.S. leads the world in cases as well as deaths, which have exceeded 144,000. With the U.S. tally of confirmed infections above 4 million and new cases surging.

The economy's recovery has also shown signs of stalling amid a resurgence of the coronavirus. The number of laid-off workers seeking jobless benefits rose mid-July for the first time since March, and at least 10 million have already lost their jobs, and some economists warn it could be years before they find work again.

Trump appears acutely aware that his political fortunes will be inextricably linked to his handling of the pandemic, alternating between putting himself at the center of the crisis with lengthy daily briefings and distancing himself from the crisis by pinning the blame for inadequate preparedness on the states.

At the same time the Trump administration is grappling with the coronavirus pandemic, it is confronted by protests springing up following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pinned him down and pressed Floyd's neck with his knee. Violent demonstrations have raged in scores of American cities, a level of unrest unseen for decades.

Nightly for months, protesters took to the streets of Portland, Oregon, for demonstrations against racial injustice that have devolved into vandalism and clashes with authorities. Long after such unrest subsided in other cities, small groups of protesters in Portland continued to set fires, spray graffiti on public buildings and battle officers.

More recently, the Trump administration's decision to call in federal agents to help protect the federal courthouse — the focus of much protest activity — has galvanized many in Portland anew. Protests have again swelled and attracted a broader base in a city that's increasingly unified and outraged about the use of federal officers.

In July, Trump said he will also send federal agents into Chicago and Albuquerque to help combat rising crime as he runs for reelection under a "law and order" mantle. Trump spoke only of Chicago and Albuquerque, but the White House said in a later press release that the program would be expanded in the next few weeks into Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee, as well.

The decision to dispatch federal agents to American cities is playing out at a hyperpoliticized moment in American politics.

With less than four months until Election Day, Trump has been warning that the violence will worsen if his Democratic rival Joe Biden wins in November.

"Some of the president's supporters have been pointing at some of the protests and some of the crackdown that the president has ordered and say, you know, this is what Joe Biden's America would look like," Kondik says. "Well, actually, we're living in Donald Trump's America right now and this is what is happening."

In Biden and Trump, voters will choose between two white septuagenarians with dramatically different prescriptions for health care, climate change, foreign policy and leadership in an era of extreme partisanship.

The 74-year-old Republican president opens with a massive cash advantage and a well-established willingness to win at any cost over his challenger.

At 77, Biden becomes the oldest major party presidential nominee in modern history. And having spent most of his life as an elected official in Washington, no nominee has had more experience in government.

But in Trump, Biden is up against an adversary the likes of which he has never faced in his decades long political career.