2020 Election Live Updates: Requiem for a Republican Convention

Trump saw his convention as a potential success story. Reality intervened.

The announcement by President Trump that he was canceling the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville, Fla., next month was the most vivid evidence to date of how the Covid-19 pandemic and his mixed signals on the virus are upending the 2020 presidential contest.

Until Thursday afternoon, Mr. Trump had been pushing for a crowded, festive convention, complete with a boisterous acceptance speech. He saw it as a celebration of his presidency and an instructive contrast to Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the Democratic Party, which have been moving toward a slimmed-down, mostly virtual convention in Milwaukee. It would show the Republican Party as tough in the face of this threat to the national well-being, focused on protecting the economy and returning life to normal — a statement as symbolic as the fight over wearing masks in public.

But at the end of the day, the pullback is not surprising, coming two days after Mr. Trump, in another reversal, endorsed the use of masks. The virus has been exploding across much of the South, and particularly in Florida.

The state has become, arguably, a case study in how not to deal with the virus, and that almost certainly would have been a running story for the thousands of reporters who would have come to Jacksonville to cover the convention. The state’s governor — Ron DeSantis, a Republican and vocal supporter of Mr. Trump — has resisted the kinds of actions, such as requiring masks or instituting stay-at-home-orders, that have been taken by other governors to try to bring the pandemic under control. Mr. DeSantis will head to the White House this afternoon for the signing of an executive order on drug prices before meeting with Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff.