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.
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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.
Trump was perplexed. The economy was strong. The president had built an enormous political infrastructure and was raking in hundreds of millions of dollars. That month, Trump's campaign conducted a $1.1 million polling project showing him leading prospective Democratic challengers even in blue states such as Colorado, New Mexico and New Hampshire.
“Sir, regardless, this is coming. It's the only thing that could take down your presidency,” Parscale told the president.
Trump snapped.
“This fucking virus,” Trump asked dismissively, according to a person with direct knowledge of the exchange, “what does it have to do with me getting reelected?”
That was exactly the attitude Joe Biden expected from the president. And Biden saw his task as unambiguous.
Create a contrast. Follow the scientists whom Trump ignored. Wear a mask, halt public events and reinvent campaigning to avoid putting people in harm's way. When Trump resumed megarallies in the midst of the pandemic — a move the Biden team viewed as reckless and unthinkable — the campaign was stunned by the questions it faced.
"Reporters were asking us why we weren't doing that?" Biden senior adviser Anita Dunn said of Trump's rallies. “‘Why aren’t you traveling more? Aren't you a bad campaign?"