'Seniors are horrified' by Trump's rallies -- but crowds 'keep the president happy': White House reporter

White House reporter Jonathan Lemire explained that President Donald Trump's poll numbers are collapsing in the Midwest because "seniors are horrified" by his handling of the pandemic.

The president has been traveling the country holding campaign rallies, where few measures are undertaken to prevent the spread of coronavirus, and the Associated Press reporter told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" the events were having the opposite effect than they're apparently intended.

"Remember this cycle began a year and a half or so ago, pre-pandemic, the Trump campaign, of those three Great Lake States, felt the best about Wisconsin," Lemire said. "They thought that the state party was stronger there, they liked the infrastructure there. That's where they thought they could place their bet because they only need one of those three to win. That's that was the original conception, but two things have gone terribly wrong for the Trump campaign."

"They went all in on law and order after what happened in Kenosha, and that backfired," he added. "We have seen public polling suggest that voters did not trust Donald Trump and would prefer Joe Biden on that issue, despite Trump's scare tactics on law and order, and then this surge in coronavirus cases in Wisconsin that happens here just in the run-up to the election which seems to be causing voters to break hard away from Trump."

The rallies aren't helping, either.

"There are those on the campaign staff who do recognize that these rallies are markers of enthusiasm and, importantly, keep the president happy," Lemire said. "That's a lot of what this is about. He himself wants to have these rallies, feels like that's his way of connecting with the voters. But they recognize there are moments when they have backfired. They create these images that so many Americans, particularly seniors, are horrified by -- crowds packed in together, no social distancing, very few masks."

"We're seeing here his numbers really plummet in the upper Midwest, which underscores what some people on his campaign have thought, that his focus here in this last week should solely be on the Sun Belt -- Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and then just try your best for Pennsylvania because you need one more, and that's where the margins seem to be closest," he added. "But, as we discussed yesterday, his campaign travel and approach remains scattershot and without much of a focus, and he's expected to go back to the Upper Midwest, to these very states, Michigan and Wisconsin, again this weekend."