Trump changes his tune on Corona/masks. Is it too little too late?

In Trump's briefing last night trump did a huge change on his take on Corona and masks. Up until now he has constantly downplayed the severity of the crisis. He has downplayed the importance of masks and social distancing. He has argued that testing needs to slow, if not stop (and tried to cut funding for testing). He has basically tried to wish the virus away this whole time. 

In the briefing last night Trump (while reading from his prompter) was clear. You need to social distance, if you can't social distance you should wear a mask. This is some pretty basic stuff that he should have been saying for the last 4 months. But it shows that he has some level of cognizance that his approach and language has been disastrous for his campaign and is making an effort to change course. Whether it will actually help is unclear as everyone has seen that he really doesn't give a shit. And he is pretty famous by this point of saying one thing when people push him, but then he pushes in the other direction and undermines his comments very quickly. 

I wonder 2 things:

1) will his lip service attempt at looking like he gives a shit about people and the crisis actually win people back?

2) can he actually keep this up? Will he revert back to his instinctual response (which is to ignore the crisis)?

Trump knows the value of virtue signalling. 

true, but he is usually unable to keep it up. Ie he will say he loves latinos, then call mexicans rapsists. that sort of thing. Virtue signaling is of limited usefulness if people know you're lying.  Trump is obviously lying because he has been saying the exact opposite for months. He was still downplaying the importance Corona as recently as the weekend in his disaster of an interview with Chris Wallace where he was called out for his lies in real time. 

I'm wondering if the change of tone is a response to his smack down by Chris. 

Not like he didn't pull a rope-a-dope 2016 in October. This isn't Trump's 1st horserace.

no, but his tricks from last time aren't working. Last time he was the "outsider" candidate. He had no record to run on. All he had to do was make vague promises and attack his opponent's corruption and that was enough to win. But he isn't the outsider any more. He is the incumbent. He has a record to run on. And right now that record is colossally mismanaging the worst crisis in decades. People are worried about the pandemic. They wanted to see their government take it seriously and do something about it.

Trump has spent months pretending it doesn't exist, then pretending it wasn't serious, then pretending like america would just ignore it and get used to it. Now, months late, he is pretending like he takes it seriously because he wasn't able to just ignore and distract from it, which was most of what he did in 2016 on hard issues. 

That's only part of it. A big part of Trump's strategy was to lull Hillary into a sense of complacency.

Hence the rope-a-dope. The only poll that really matters is the one in November.

ok, but the idea is to get your opponent to think you are unpopular, not to actually make yourself unpopular. And treating a global pandemic that is killing americans in the 10's of thousands as if it is no big deal is an excellent way to make yourself unpopular. 

You don't know how the rope-a-dope works then, Trump literally plans on doing what he did in 2016.

in order for it to be a rope-a-dope you need to be faking. Tricking them into thinking you are weak. You don't break your own arms and legs and go "I've got you now!!". Trump has badly damaged his support by his mis-management of the defining crisis of his presidency. 

Which is insanely easy in a censoring cancel culture year.

I had someone tell me that my Congressman who won by 10 points in 2018 was vulnerable this year to a Democrat who has 30k in the bank compared to a million. I have a picture with the dude. He’s a great guy

These cities are such lol to watch right now. The excuses for 50 years of Democrat failure are endless.

tHeY aReN’t pROGreSsIVeS

Preview of the democrat convention.

Trump the sensible.

Will the voters buy it?

If they are stupid enough they will.....D'oh!