The same impulses that helped lift the president to
victory in 2016 contributed to his undoing four years later.
Air Force One was descending into Detroit when President Trump posed a question that would come to define his entire approach to the deadly coronavirus pandemic: “Do you think I should wear a mask?” he asked the aides and advisers gathered in the plane’s front cabin.
Trump was headed to visit a Ford Motor plant in Ypsilanti, Mich., which by May was already a coronavirus hot zone, with more than 5,000 dead,thousands more sickened — and cases still spiking — in the critical Midwest battleground state.
But the responses were nearly unanimous, with senior White House officials arguing that wearing a mask was unnecessary and would send a bad signal to the public about the magnitude of the crisis. Continue reading.