Fabrizio was leading the presentation. It was Stepien, Fabrizio, Miller, McLaughlin, and White House political director, Brian Jack, lined up in front of the president’s desk, with Scavino, Kushner, Meadows, Hicks, and policy advisor Stephen Miller, and random others wandering in and out of the Oval. There was a PowerPoint deck, but it was handed out in hard copy. Trump held up a page at a time with distaste: “What am I looking at here?”

He pressed the red button on his desk for another Diet Coke.

An impatient Fabrizio was trying to talk him through it. But Trump was resisting, a combination of his not wanting to hear what he was being told, not being able to understand what he was being told, and not being interested enough to want to understand it.

It was hard to hold Trump’s attention when he wasn’t the one talking.

But Fabrizio’s message was clear: the president was on the wrong side of COVID. No longer did the “China virus” rhetoric work; it had run out its shelf life.

It was plain, and Fabrizio spelled out the numbers almost with delight: a large majority of voters saw masks and testing as the way to open the economy, with nearly 70 percent of voters in agreement on this. When the president was perceived as taking COVID seriously, his approval ratings spiked. Most people blamed the spread of the virus on the lack of social distancing and failure to wear masks; most voters and a majority of Trump voters favored requiring masks to keep the country open; most favored an executive order requiring masks for indoor public places; two-thirds of Trump voters thought the president’s wearing a mask would set a good example and be an act of patriotism; and eight of ten of Trump voters supported wearing masks as a preventative measure.

There really wasn’t any room for debate.

“This is a no-brainer,” said Kushner, seemingly awestruck by the numbers, wandering in and suddenly paying attention to the meeting.

Even McLaughlin came down clearly in favor, at the very least, of less hostility toward masks, suggesting an indoor mask mandate in federal buildings.

The scowling president dug in harder. “I know my people. They won’t have it. They don’t believe it. No mask mandates!” He clenched his shoulders and lifted his hands to ward off the mask mandate, his whole body seeming to revolt at the very notion.

Meadows, four months into his new chief of staff role, understood the president’s COVID phobia and now willingly yessed him: “A mask mandate? People would go crazy.”

“Mr. President,” said an equally immovable Fabrizio, “I’m going to tell you what your voters truly believe about masks. They believe whatever you tell them to believe.”

Trying to move Trump one way often resulted in moving him the other. Telling him what he should do made him not do it.