"Trump Voters Are Old and They Don't Want to Die": Why Trump Finally Flip-Flopped on Mask Wearing

[babylonsister]

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/why-trump-finally-flip-flopped-on-mask-wearing


“Trump Voters Are Old and They Don’t Want to Die”: Why Trump Finally Flip-Flopped on Mask Wearing
New campaign chiefs Bill Stepien and Jason Miller got the president to reverse course as sagging swing state polls show his coronavirus strategy is tanking with voters. “For the longest time, he didn’t want to be told what to do,” said a former West Wing official.
By Gabriel Sherman
July 22, 2020

snip//

The flip-flop is Trump’s biggest concession yet to the fact that his erratic coronavirus response has damaged him politically. “For the longest time, he didn’t want to be told what to do,” a former West Wing official told me. An Economist/YouGov poll released on Tuesday showed Trump trailing Joe Biden by seven points. “It’s simple. Trump voters are old and they don’t want to die,” a Republican close to the White House said.

According to sources, Trump came around to mask wearing after intense lobbying by his new campaign chiefs, Bill Stepien and Jason Miller. “They showed him polling that things are so bad in the swing states. It was enough to get Trump to move on from the mask issue,” a campaign adviser told me. In an interview, Miller praised Trump’s evolving position on masks. “I thought yesterday’s press conference was fantastic and laid out a clear path forward for how the government and American people will unite to defeat the invisible China virus,” Miller said.

The new campaign regime’s apparent success at getting Trump to abandon mask denial is a sign of Miller’s growing influence in Trumpworld since Trump demoted Brad Parscale earlier this month. “Jason understands my message. He gets who I am,” Trump told an adviser a few days ago. It is also something of a comeback for Miller, a 2016 campaign veteran who had been Trump’s original pick for White House communications director. (Miller reportedly turned down the West Wing job after former Trump campaign staffer A.J. Delgado disclosed she and Miller had had an affair during the 2016 campaign; she later gave birth to their child.) “Jason is the first person Trump talks to in the morning and the last one he talks to at night,” the campaign adviser said. (“No, that would be Melania Trump,” Miller said when I asked if he spoke to Trump last each day.) Miller shares Trump’s penchant for going low. He told me that the campaign will ratchet up attacks on Biden by alleging the former vice president will be controlled by the “radical left wing.” “Things are going to escalate a notch,” Miller said.

Republicans worry, though, that there will be only so much Miller can do to temper Trump’s worst impulses. Trump is a “contrarian and likes to pick fights,” the former West Wing official said. At a fundraiser earlier this month, Trump told donors that he was skeptical of COVID-19 vaccines, according to a person briefed on his remarks. “You know people get these huge vaccines and they’re never the same after,” Trump said, according to this person. Earlier this month, Trump also threatened to veto a defense spending bill that included a provision to rename military bases named after Confederate figures. “Why is he doing this?” asked the former official. “The only people who want this are in Alabama, and they’re with Trump anyway.”

[LiberalFighter]

1. I had calculated earlier that there would be 8 million 65 and older dying...

between Nov 2016 and before the 2020 election. Of those, most likely about 60% would normally vote Republican.

Since March there would be a slight revision but it would only be a guess. I'm figuring of those that would had lived long enough to vote in 2020 but because of Covid-19 most would had fallen in the group that followed Trump and were anti-mask and considered it a hoax.

[lagomorph777]

2. Way too late. He's already lost Florida (not previously a swing state) and all the swing states.

[Thekaspervote]

3. Add that to the polls showing his mail in ballot hoax will further depress gop votes not dems

For the many of the same reasons as listed in the OP