The nursing home industry has been pushing for looser regulations for years. And they got what they wanted at the start of the pandemic. But now, advocates say lax standards are fueling the virus' spread.

One senior administration official said the lack of recognition some of Trumps top aides have paid to coronavirus has done irreversible damage to his reelection campaign. Internal divisions over how much focus Trump should lend to the virus have plagued the White House in recent weeks. Chief of staff Mark Meadows and senior adviser Jared Kushner have both pushed the president to focus on communicating a strong second-term agenda, including measures he would take to help bring the U.S. economy roaring back to life, while others have encouraged him to focus on combating the virus itself given its widespread impact on most peoples lives.

If you solve the virus problem, almost everything else will solve itself, said the senior administration official.

Instead of attending meetings with health officials alongside Vice President Mike Pence, the president has been eager to resume a demanding campaign schedule that mirrors his approach in 2016. When Trump has weighed in on the viral pandemic, it has been tangential: Last week, he hosted a White House event to discuss the reopening of schools this fall. But he has consistently attributed the rising number of cases in southwestern states to increased testing capabilities, even as other administration officials acknowledge that testing alone cannot statistically account for surges in most areas.

In an interview with CBS on Tuesday, Trump said Covid-19 testing in the U.S. has been working too well.

Were finding thousands and thousands of cases, he told the network.

Campaign staffers who scrambled to get the president back in front of the large audiences he craves were so shaken by the Tulsa episode they waited until the eleventh hour to call off his New Hampshire rally for fear of upsetting him, according to the two people close to the campaign. Staffers who were already on the ground in Portsmouth, N.H., a riverfront city situated in a county Trump handily won in 2016, were caught off guard last Friday when their colleagues alerted them of the change. One campaign volunteer, who questioned the reasoning at the time, noted that intense humidity was the only weather-related issue on the ground and suggested that Parscale postponed the event until the campaign could guarantee larger crowds.

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign said the rally was expected to be rescheduled in the next one or two weeks, and disputed claims that it was postponed for any reason other than the forecast. The same spokesperson on Tuesday said there was nothing to announce about when the rally might be rescheduled.

President Trump and his campaign are continuing to stay engaged with both in-person and digital events, said Erin Perrine, director of press communications for the campaign. Just this week, we hit over 1 billion video views since April across all our social media platforms. Last week, President Trump hosted a roundtable in Miami, Vice President Pence had a hugely successful bus tour in Pennsylvania and Women for Trump just finished up a bus tour in Wisconsin.

New Hampshire is one of several states Trump lost in 2016 that his campaign is now eyeing to make up for potential losses elsewhere in November. His first-place finish in the states 2016 primary, followed by a narrow loss to Democrat Hillary Clinton in the general election, revealed the surprising strength of Trumps populist brand in a state known for its independent and late-breaking voters. Inside his campaign and among his supporters, Trumps Portsmouth rally was seen as a chance to restart his reelection campaign in a state that boasts a sizable population of enthusiastic MAGA fans.

President Trumps affinity to New Hampshire is because it all started here for him, and he has a loyal following here, said Corky Messner, a Trump-endorsed Republican running to unseat Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. The four electoral votes in New Hampshire could potentially be very important.

Stephanie Murray contributed to this report.

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Threat of a Trump without rallies triggers fears across GOP - POLITICO