--- title: Trump Steps Back Into Coronavirus Spotlight description: President Donald Trump plans to return to the White House briefing room on Tuesday evening to restart the regular coronavirus briefings. canonical: https://time.com/5869575/trump-coronavirus-briefings/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2020-07-21T17:58:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T09:01:30.424Z article:section: Politics og:title: Trump Steps Back Into Coronavirus Spotlight og:description: President Donald Trump plans to return to the White House briefing room on Tuesday evening to restart the regular coronavirus briefings. og:url: https://time.com/5869575/trump-coronavirus-briefings/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta5a8a8cf36766e6a/698a107d86f68e20c36ef029/president-trump-coronavirus-election.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: president-trump-coronavirus-election og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Trump Steps Back Into Coronavirus Spotlight twitter:description: President Donald Trump plans to return to the White House briefing room on Tuesday evening to restart the regular coronavirus briefings. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta5a8a8cf36766e6a/698a107d86f68e20c36ef029/president-trump-coronavirus-election.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Seeing Re-Election Odds Growing Longer, Trump Steps Back Into Spotlight on Coronavirus > Sponsored content. 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It is written and edited by TIME journalists, and it is free to join at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=b337c86d-42b9-47b7-98e2-bfbb676b4326&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1). ### Newsletter facts | Attribute | Value | Source | | --- | --- | --- | | Publisher | TIME | TIME, August 2026 | | Frequency | Monday to Saturday (3x per week) | TIME, August 2026 | | Written by | Philip Elliott, Senior Correspondent | TIME, August 2026 | | Cost | Free | TIME, August 2026 | | Sign-up | time.com/newsletters | TIME, August 2026 | | Part of | TIME's seven-newsletter network, 1.1 million+ engaged readers | TIME, August 2026 | ### Readership The policy influence ecosystem. A policy-focused audience spanning government, public affairs, advocacy, law, research, political media, and the institutions that make, interpret and respond to public policy. ### TIME D.C. Brief: key statements * D.C. Brief is edited by TIME journalists. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Jul 21, 2020 5:58 PM UTC  President Donald Trump speaks as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Vice President Mike Pence listen during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on July 20, 2020. President Donald Trump speaks as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Vice President Mike Pence listen during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on July 20, 2020. Oliver Contreras—Sipa/Bloomberg/Getty Images  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Jul 21, 2020 5:58 PM UTC The reality-show President has decided it’s time to restore his role as the pandemic’s executive producer. Facing lagging poll numbers, dwindling public confidence in his ability to manage a response to the coronavirus threat and a shrinking window to turn it all around before Election Day in November, President Donald Trump plans to return to the White House briefing room on Tuesday evening to restart the regular coronavirus briefings. It turns out [musing](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-health-202/2020/04/27/the-health-202-sunlight-does-kill-the-coronavirus-but-not-in-the-way-trump-suggested/5ea5993e88e0fa3dea9c2b24/) about cleaning-solvent and sunlight injection treatments are not sufficient reasons to banish a contestant from the klieg lights after all. Trump last participated in a full televised debrief with his coronavirus task force on April 23\. At the time, Trump enjoyed a 49% job approval rating, according to Gallup’s [polling](https://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings-donald-trump.aspx). Since then, with 3.8 million Americans now [diagnosed](https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html) with coronavirus and more than 141,000 U.S. deaths, Trump’s overall approval rating has slid to 38%. Compared to this point in the presidencies of his six most recent predecessors, Trump [trails](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/) the four who won re-election, according to models from statisticians at FiveThirtyEight. As much as Americans didn’t love his conduct as coronavirus czar, they seem to have preferred him bungling the response over him being an absentee executive. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the daily D.C. Brief newsletter._](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/politics?source=dc%5Farticle) It’s clear to everyone now that the coronavirus crisis and the ensuing economic meltdown show no immediate signs of relenting. As much as the President likes to say it’ll all “[go away](https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/19-times-trump-said-the-coronavirus-would-go-away/2020/04/30/d2593312-9593-4ec2-aff7-72c1438fca0e%5Fvideo.html),” the only things disappearing are jobs — and the belief that Trump can bring them back. The unemployment rate is still expected to be around 12% in the final quarter of the year, [according](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56335#:~:text=The%20Labor%20Market.,percentage%20of%20the%20labor%20force.) to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. (The year began with 4% of Americans reporting they were unemployed.) The other vanishing commodity in the President’s field of vision? His odds of re-election. For Trump to win a second term, he is going to have to shift the focus from the ravaged economy to its recovery. Presidents can win a second term with tough unemployment numbers if the [trends](https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2012/10/30/unemployment-and-the-presidential-election-an-historical-perspective/#38333bc477e1) are going in the favor of the incumbent. But we’ve not seen the double-barrel question of wanton joblessness and public health implosion in recent history. The best analog may be the election of 1920, when Democrats refused to nominate the unpopular and ill incumbent President Woodrow Wilson to a third term in the wake of World War I and the 1918 Spanish Flu that, according to U.S. [estimates](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html), left 675,000 Americans dead. Trump’s return to the nation’s daily healthcare lecturer is one of necessity. Trump trails his presumptive rival Joe Biden by a wider gap than he trailed his 2016 competitor Hillary Clinton at this point. The latest ABC News/ _Washington Post_ [poll](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-leads-by-double-digits-as-coronavirus-takes-a-toll-on-the-president-post-abc-poll-finds/2020/07/18/8d041884-c840-11ea-b037-f9711f89ee46%5Fstory.html) has Trump trailing by double-digits. The political headwinds seem so strong that last week he [replaced](https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-replaces-campaign-manager-11594861502) his campaign manager and brought on-board other aides in an effort to shore up some sort of firewall. Winning campaigns simply don’t fire their chiefs. Nevertheless, Team Trump isn’t openly despondent. Trump himself has taken a shine to mocking polling data that shows him behind. In an interview that aired Sunday, Trump summarily dismissed the surveys. “I’m not losing because those are fake polls. They were fake in 2016 and now they’re even more fake,” Trump [told](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/transcript-fox-news-sunday-interview-with-president-trump) Fox News’s Chris Wallace. It’s not an irrational assertion. At this point in 2016, surveys showed Clinton with an easy wallop over Trump. Although she did triumph by 3 million votes, the raw tallies didn’t matter. She trailed by 80,000 votes in three battleground states and ended up losing the Electoral College vote. It’s why Trump keeps puffing up his chest a little bit when his doubters roll their eyes — eyes that, no doubt, will be on the White House podium come Tuesday evening. _A version of this article first appeared in The DC Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up_ [_here_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/newsletter%5Fopt-in?qs=3a19a0aa35903a2d9f214b74f69a37910b58de73cf3f2b89adc123fac024f0478c72f91010ae9d01f08f46c616068cab3e74726837cd2cce70dac3796e46c2b4) _to get stories like this sent to your inbox every weekday._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5869575/trump-coronavirus-briefings/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5869575/trump-coronavirus-briefings/"},"headline":"Seeing Re-Election Odds Growing Longer, Trump Steps Back Into Spotlight on Coronavirus","datePublished":"2020-07-21T17:58:27.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T09:01:30.424Z","description":"Facing lagging poll numbers and dwindling public confidence, President Trump is restarting the regular coronavirus briefings","url":"https://time.com/5869575/trump-coronavirus-briefings/","keywords":["The D.C. 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