Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast for Wednesday, July 22, 2020.

I'm John Pauldhurtz, the editor of commentary with me is always senior writer Christine Rosen,

high Christine, associate editor Noah Rothman, high Noah, and executive editor, a green

walled high A. John. So yesterday was the day that Trump finally became president. You know,

every time Trump seems to exceed expectations on his performance, or that was the case in 2017,

2018, people would say stuff like this was the day Trump finally became president. So the press

conference yesterday or the coronavirus briefing yesterday was unexpectedly compressed, compact,

changed the entire message and focus of the administration as far as we could tell in terms

of its general messaging, as we say, pro-mask. Things are going to get worse before they get better,

but I hear a charge to show that in fact the performance of the United States in the administration,

the administering of tests and the response times and all of that are actually better than people

understand they were. Abe, give us a sense of your sense of the press conference.

Well, you know, as someone who for the past three years or so has wanted to see Trump

sort of do better, not wanted him to go out there and make a fool of himself, I was completely shocked

and delighted. Basically, it was what was, I think the biggest change was that it was so clear. It

was the clarity of it, right? It's not even that he said so many different things. It's just that

what he said made perfect sense related to the reality of the pandemic situation directly

and wasn't particularly controversial at all and seemed authoritative. Of course,

I think it all proved a little too good to be true at some point. Things took their

expectantly surreal turn when he wished Gilan Maxwell the best or wished her well. Well,

she, and he's he met her many times in Palm Beach. Yes, yes. Can I just point out one thing about

that? First of all, it is already being reported as if he kind of brought it up of his own volition

...