President Trump's Rose Garden coronavirus-testing celebration may have ended on an angry note but it started with grandiloquence. "In every generation, through every challenge and hardship and danger, America has risen to the task," Trump said. "We have met the moment and we have prevailed." He was making a case that testing was at a sufficient level to reopen the economy, even as the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 rose above 80,000.
Off-camera, "some of Trump's advisers described the president as glum and shell-shocked by his declining popularity," The Washington Post reported over the weekend. "In private conversations, he has struggled to process how his fortunes suddenly changed from believing he was on a glide path to re-election to realizing that he is losing to the likely Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, in virtually every poll, including his own campaign's internal surveys. ... More than anything, three advisers said, Trump is focused on how to turn the economy around and reopen the country, seeing a nascent recovery as key to getting re-elected and his handling of the economy as one of his only strengths in the polls over Joe Biden."
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