Donald Trump changes his tone. Barely in the polls against Joe Biden soon 100 days before the presidential election, criticized for his management of the coronavirus, the American president tried, Tuesday, July 21, to regain control by recognizing the seriousness of the health crisis.

"It will surely, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better. I don't like to say it but it is like that," he said at the White House, where he resumed for the first time since late. April with the press conferences on Covid-19, called to become regular again, as at the height of the pandemic.

"In recent weeks, we have seen a worrying increase in cases in many parts of our South," he added, referring to "big fires" and even a "very difficult situation" in Florida, a state ruled by one of his close allies where he plans to hold the Republican convention in a month.

Wearing a mask

After an improvement towards the end of spring, the epidemic resumed with more vigor in the country, already the most bereaved in the world with 141,800 dead. The number of cases is exploding - more than 60,000 per day for a week, for a total of 3.88 million since the start of the pandemic - and daily deaths are also on the rise - more than 700 per day on average.

If Donald Trump praised his management of the virus, maintained that it would end up "disappearing", and enthusiastically welcomed the progress towards a vaccine, he also for the first time clearly recommended the wearing of the mask.

"We ask everyone to wear a mask when physical distancing is not possible," he said, taking out of his pocket his own protection, which he however only endorsed in public. times on July 11, several months after the start of the pandemic.

"Whether you like the masks or not, they have an impact", he pleaded, while he is accused of having himself stirred up the embers of resistance by defending so far individual "freedom" in the matter. He even went so far as to "implore" young people to "avoid crowded bars", an alarmist tone abandoned for several weeks.

Sobriety

In his own Republican camp, several governors on the front line to stem the disease and many elected officials struggling with delicate parliamentary elections in November called on the president to evolve on the mask and, beyond, to renew the fight against the epidemic a priority.

Alone in the face of journalists - and therefore without being accompanied by his respected immunology advisor Anthony Fauci whom he accused of being too "alarmist" - Donald Trump remained relatively sober. Unlike the endless spring "briefings", he controlled the duration of his press conference, which lasted less than half an hour.

Above all, he did not turn it into a campaign rally or anti-Biden rant, as he did in mid-July during an intervention officially devoted to China. But Donald Trump ended by promising to hold such press conferences "quite often", and also to address "other subjects, in particular economic".

With AFP

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