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Bowing to the coronavirus threat, President Donald Trump has scrapped plans for a four-night Republican National Convention celebration in Florida that had been set to draw more than 10,000 people to a pandemic hot spot to mark his renomination. Trump had already moved the convention’s public events out of North Carolina because of virus concerns. But the spiking virus shifted to the South, too, and the planned gathering in Jacksonville increasingly appeared to be both a health and political risk. Trump and his advisers feared that going forward with big parties and “infomercial” programming in Florida would ultimately backfire on the president. (Miller and Farrington, 7/24)

On Wednesday evening, President Donald Trump convened his top political advisers, including campaign manager Bill Stepien and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, for a conference call to consider a move that would have been unthinkable just a few weeks ago: Cancel his party’s upcoming convention in Jacksonville, Fla. By Thursday afternoon, with coronavirus raging in the state, the president who all year envisioned a boisterous send-off to the final months of his reelection campaign, had made up his mind: It was a no-go. (Isenstadt, Dixon and Fineout, 7/23)

Trump has for months instructed his advisers to find a way to stage a loud, boisterous and packed convention celebration, after North Carolina officials said they could not guarantee such an event in Charlotte. Advisers scoured the country for a new location to host a multi-night televised spectacle, settling on Jacksonville, where the mayor and Florida’s governor are Trump’s allies. The president’s ambition, however, ran headlong into a massive spike in coronavirus cases in Florida, growing local opposition and enormous logistical hurdles. At one point, convention planners announced they would administer daily coronavirus tests to thousands of delegates, donors and members of the media to help reduce the viral risk. That plan was later scrapped to move large portions of the celebrations to an outdoor venue. (Scherer, Dawsey and Itkowitz, 7/23)