Jonathan Lemire: New York Times Front Page Led to Trump’s ‘Twitter Explosion’

The front page of the New York Times commemorating some of the victims of Coronavirus led to President Donald Trump’s weekend Twitter spree, according to the AP’s Jonathan Lemire. Lemire told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that Trump is acutely aware of the harm the virus is doing to his reelection.

“The New York Times front page was such a powerful statement and image because, in part, of all the names that couldn’t fit on the front page,” Lemire said, praising the newspaper’s efforts.

“The President here is eager to talk about anything else,” Lemire went on. “And that is why, according to people I talked to around him, it led to the Twitter explosion this weekend. He knows 100,000 will be a somber milestone when we hit it in the next couple of days.”

“Combined, of course, with a struggling economy, these are the things the President knows are going to very much damage his re-election chances.”

“Now obviously, he’s never been one to show much in the way of empathy. He struggled with previous tragedies like a forest fire or hurricane. He’s rarely talked about that in terms of this pandemic. He’s rarely offered sympathy for those that have gone.”

Lemire noted that Trump was now unable to run the kind of campaign he’d wanted. He can’t hit Joe Biden on ‘Obamagate’ or talk up a good economy, resulting in his desperation.

“We’re seeing him desperate, he and his allies trying to revive that over the weekend … seizing upon the Biden joke.But instead we’re seeing a real frustration here. There’s sort of a flailing from this White House, from his campaign team, knowing that right now, his own internal polls say if the election were held today, he would lose.”

“That has led to, more than anything, a sort of unmoored, unhinged Twitter spree that we saw this weekend, instead of a focus on those who have died in the pandemic.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.