Trump Abruptly Cancels Republican Convention in Jacksonville: ‘It’s Not the Right Time’ – The New York Times

Bowing to threats posed by the coronavirus, President Trump reversed course on Thursday and canceled the portion of the Republican National Convention to be held in Jacksonville, Fla., just weeks after he moved the event from North Carolina because state officials wanted the party to take health precautions there.

The surprise announcement threw one of the tent-pole moments of Mr. Trump’s re-election effort into limbo, with the president describing in vague terms how the Republicans would hold his renomination in North Carolina and do “other things with tele-rallies and online.” It was an ill-defined sketch of an August week that Mr. Trump once envisioned drawing huge crowds and energizing his struggling bid for a second term.

While Mr. Trump has spent weeks urging Florida and other states to reopen their economies and return to life as normal, virus cases have surged in Jacksonville and across the region. The president had insisted on moving ahead with the event until Thursday, talking up the big party that Republicans would hold in Jacksonville even with the dangers of large gatherings and some G.O.P. leaders saying they would not attend.

“We won’t do a big, crowded convention, per se — it’s not the right time for that,” Mr. Trump said during a short news conference in the White House briefing room, his third this week, as his aides try to persuade the president to focus on treating the virus seriously in his public comments.

The convention efforts in both Jacksonville and Charlotte, N.C., which have preoccupied some G.O.P. officials and donors for months, now stand as an object lesson in chaotic planning for a party that prizes its ability to raise money and execute splashy displays.

The Jacksonville convention host committee had about $6 million in various accounts, and had spent some of that money already. It had $20 million in commitments that were still firm on Tuesday, according to two officials involved in the fund-raising. On Thursday, they were still assessing whether donors would be able to get their money back but assumed they would not be able to do so in full.

Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor, said that many donors didn’t want to give because they believed the event wouldn’t happen. Edward E. Burr, a real estate developer and member of the Jacksonville host committee, said that in the past few days donors had been calling him expressing serious concerns about the rising number of infections in Florida.

“I’m glad Donald Trump took his head out of the sand long enough to realize what a predictable, preventable disaster he was about to inflict on the city of Jacksonville,” Terrie Rizzo, the chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party, said in a statement. “His ego-driven political stunt has wasted precious time and resources during a pandemic.”

Mr. Trump claimed that his political advisers had tried to tell him they could make the convention work in Jacksonville, noting the “enthusiasm” that was building. Florida is crucial to Mr. Trump’s re-election prospects, and he particularly needs support from older people — a population that is more vulnerable to the virus and makes up a large share of the state’s voters — to prevail there on Election Day against Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is leading in most polls in the state.

But the president tried to portray himself as more concerned about public health. “I said, ‘There’s nothing more important in our country than keeping our people safe,’” he said of his conversations with advisers. “I just felt it was wrong” to have people “going to what turned out to be a hot spot.”

The president’s sudden focus on health concerns Thursday came after months of playing down the virus. He predicted only three weeks ago that it would “just disappear,” and pushed party officials to proceed with convention plans despite the alarming spike in virus cases in Florida this month. As of this week, Republican officials were still meeting in the state to make the convention a reality.

But as cases surged, voters, donors and elected officials from both parties expressed skepticism about holding a big gathering just several weeks away. A Quinnipiac University poll released on Thursday showed that 62 percent of the state’s voters thought the convention would be unsafe to hold. The poll also showed Mr. Biden leading Mr. Trump by 13 percentage points in Florida; in a Quinnipiac poll in April, Mr. Biden had a four-point lead.

Mr. Trump said that the decision to cancel the event was designed for “safety” and that the news media would have faulted him if he had continued. He said the party might hold rallies that people could join by telephone or video, adding that the actual work of the convention — approving the platform, for instance — would take place in Charlotte, the original site of the gathering.

Mr. Trump’s news conference on Thursday was intended to be about a plan for reopening schools in the fall. But he decided to announce his convention move, overshadowing the other news.

The decision came after some of his advisers pleaded with him to start taking the coronavirus more seriously, to try to revive re-election prospects that have cratered over voter dissatisfaction with his handling of the public health threat. The president held conversations with his new campaign manager, Bill Stepien, and the Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The decision was made in the last 24 hours, the people said. The discussions were so closely held that some people involved in convention planning learned about the decision from Mr. Trump’s news conference.