Trump’s Presidency Hangs on One Decision—When To Reopen America. By Pat Buchanan.

What appears conclusive now is this: The American people and nation are aware, fully engaged in the fight, and, on several fronts, gaining the whip hand over the pandemic. …

Upon this question now, the Trump presidency appears to hang:

Will Trump’s actions flatten the curve and put the pandemic on an irreversible downward course in daily cases and deaths, as he produces a U-turn, if not a V-turn, dramatically driving the economy upward from depression and toward national prosperity?

Can he revive the economy without reviving the virus?

Or will the coronavirus so severely cripple the economy that the depression it produces will kill the Trump presidency?

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie framed the issue thus: “Politically, nothing else matters. … I have never seen a time when an opponent is more irrelevant. And that’s not an insult to Vice President Biden. …

Trump’s true adversary in this election is not Joe Biden… [who] but a name on the November ballot you mark if you want to remove and replace Donald Trump.

Trump’s real antagonists are the media who detest him and are determined, having failed to impeach and remove him, to drive him from office by portraying him as a foolish, failed president in the worst crisis to hit the country since Pearl Harbor.

The crucial decision Trump will make is to choose the exact moment to reopen the country and the economy, without igniting a new spike in the pandemic that induces despair and causes a panic.

The president’s aides in charge of the medical crisis want the longest delay possible. His economic and political advisers, fearing Trump could be forced to run as Herbert Hoover did, at the nadir of a new depression, want an earlier decision to start opening up the country. …

Trump’s decision, which will determine the fate of his presidency, is likely close at hand.