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Air Force One was descending into Detroit when President Trump posed a question that would come to define his entire approach to the deadly coronavirus pandemic: “Do you think I should wear a mask?” he asked the aides and advisers gathered in the plane’s front cabin. Trump was headed to visit a Ford Motor plant in Ypsilanti, Mich., which by May was already a coronavirus hot zone, with more than 5,000 dead, thousands more sickened — and cases still spiking — in the critical Midwest battleground state. But the responses were nearly unanimous, with senior White House officials arguing that wearing a mask was unnecessary and would send a bad signal to the public about the magnitude of the crisis. You’re the leader of the free world, they told him, and the leader of the free world doesn’t need a mask. (Parker, Dawsey, Viser and Scherer, 11/7)

His prospects for re-election were dragged down by a pandemic that exposed his weaknesses along with ours. Chief among them was his reckless approach to a virus that landed him in the hospital at the peak of the campaign. “If the President never gets COVID, he wins the election. Our polling showed a significant dip when that happened, particularly with suburban, college-educated, non-liberal men,” says GOP strategist Brad Todd. “Trump getting COVID sent a signal to those people that his management style had consequences even for him personally and was therefore unlikely to change.” (Bennett and Berenson, (11/7)

Since Biden did not win in a landslide, it’s easy to think that the result could have been different if the country were not enduring a global pandemic that has killed more than 230,000 Americans and battered the economy in the span of just eight months. Once it arrived, it was inevitable the coronavirus would shape the 2020 contest. But it didn’t have to be a drag on Trump’s reelection. If he had responded responsibly, it could have been his golden ticket to a second term by proving his leadership skills to voters already slipping from his grasp.  (Levy, 11/7)

Brad Parscale was on the phone with President Donald Trump and top White House officials in mid-February when someone on the line asked the campaign manager what worried him the most. Parscale, speaking from his Arlington, Va., apartment, had just told the president how good his internal poll numbers looked. But now he had an urgent message: The coronavirus was a big problem — and it could cost him reelection. (Korecki, Isenstadt, Kumar, Orr, Cadelago and Caputo, 11/7)