With large political rallies tough to pull off with the coronavirus gripping the country, the president has been using the backdrop of the White House to make his election pitch. It occurred most noticeably on Tuesday, when the president convened reporters for a press conference purportedly about punishing China, only to spend an hour repeatedly bashing presumptive 2020 rival Joe Biden’s policies in a stream-of-consciousness, rally-style speech. But it’s a tactic that goes back months, to the beginning of the coronavirus lockdowns, when the president spoke from the White House briefing room podium almost every night, mixing defenses of his administration’s work combating the pandemic with broadsides against Biden…
“Never before has a president arrived in the Rose Garden with a blow torch,” said former Barack Obama adviser David Axelrod. “Presidents may make announcements from the Rose Garden, they may make even oblique references to opposition, but no president has walked into the Rose Garden and basically delivered a one-hour excoriation about their opponent.”
Even among some Trump allies, the rally-like language can go too far.
“You want to play offense, not defense in the Rose Garden. It’s not that we don’t agree with all his points on the far left agenda of Biden but it’s not the time or place,” said one Trump fundraiser.
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