Trump Is Trying To Restart His Rallies In A ‘Moonshot Mission’

President Donald Trump is not keen on working from home. He wants his campaign to find a way to get him back on the road to fire up his base and whip up media coverage for whatever he wants to talk about. Trump has forcefully questioned his aides why he cannot hold rallies when he can travel in his official capacity as president, Politico reported.

Any attempt to form a strategy, described as "a moonshot mission" by Jason Miller, a 2016 Trump campaign adviser, would bump into a challenge: A majority of Americans, including a most Republicans, are hesitant to quickly reopen the economy and are extremely skeptical of attending mass gatherings.

States are still grappling with how to deal with the coronavirus pandemic as health officials warn that large gatherings can spread the virus in a community very quickly. The CDC says that “At a substantial level of community transmission, it is recommended to cancel mass gatherings of any size.”

The CDC does not come right out and say that all mass gatherings should be avoided, but they have extremely stringent guidelines on how one should take place. If Trump is to follow the CDC’s recommendations, then his campaign rallies will be very different from their usual format.

The president has historically used his rallies to fire up his base and influence the media’s coverage of him. Cable news has consistently covered his rallies live, giving the president a direct line to speak to TV news’ viewers without any real-time fact-checking of his statements. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and the inability to hold rallies, Trump took over the White House’s coronavirus briefings, and like his rallies, those did good ratings as well.

However, in response to pressure from public health officials over false statements Trump has made in these briefings, as well as Trump’s declining favorability ratings over the past month (49 of 50 governors have higher coronavirus poll numbers than the president), these briefings have been shelved. The president’s freewheeling and antagonistic campaign rally style did not mesh well with the serious and sober analysis demanded by these public health briefings, and after weeks of lobbying from Republican allies to let health officials take center stage, the president has slowly phased himself out of these briefings.

Former Executive Chairman and CEO of CBS, Les Moonves, famously said in 2016 that “[Trump] may not be good for America, but he’s damn good for CBS,” reflecting the symbiotic relationship between Trump and the media. Trump may call them fake news and they may react with indignation, but at the end of the day, both the media and Trump need each other to accomplish their goal of attracting as many viewers to their product as possible.

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s virtual campaign events have received scant media attention when compared to Trump’s rallies, and Trump is no-doubt itching to get back on the campaign trail in order to exploit this competitive advantage he has over the Biden.