[homoe]

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump made his demands for the planned Republican National Convention in Charlotte quite clear to North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who had balked at agreeing to a mass gathering of tens of thousands of delegates, allies and media.

In a phone call, Trump told the Democratic governor he would accept his party's nomination in an arena filled with cheering supporters, coronavirus pandemic or not. "Since the day I came down the escalator, I've never had an empty seat and I find the biggest stadiums," he told Cooper on Friday, according to two people familiar with the call who requested anonymity to share its contents. "I don't want to be sitting in a place that's 50 percent empty," Trump said.

Trump's obsession with crowd size and the spectacle he insisted should greet his renomination came on a day during which extraordinary pressure was building on other fronts, as protesters against police violence began to mass near the White House and in cities and towns across America. Trump, in the roughly 15-minute conversation, casually dismissed any health concerns that might arise from squeezing thousands of supporters - wearing masks only if they choose to - inside an arena to hear his acceptance speech. The full details of the call have not previously been reported. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The president's call to Cooper - who unsuccessfully pleaded, by praising Trump, that the president abide by restrictions set by health officials - came on the same day Trump called Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, to see whether he might host the convention on Trump's terms. Cooper has insisted that it is too early to determine what will be safe for the convention, scheduled to be held Aug. 24-27. Trump had a blunt response to Cooper's reminders about the potential cost of crowding so many people into a closed arena.

"We can't do social distancing," the president said, according to the two people familiar with the call.

The Friday conversation was the second time that week that Trump inserted himself into the middle of a two-year planning process for his party's convention and derailed ongoing talks about how to safely hold a mass gathering in the midst of a pandemic. He began the week with a Memorial Day broadside against Cooper in which he mocked the governor as still being "in shutdown mood."

The fallout has sent RNC officials shuttling around the country to consider other options. Possible replacements include Jacksonville and Orlando in Florida, Nashville, New Orleans and even Las Vegas, the only other city that submitted a formal bid to host the convention back in 2018. Also in play are Phoenix, the site of a major anti-Trump rally in 2017, and Dallas, according to a Republican operative.

A Republican familiar with the talks said RNC officials are asking those cities to approve the convention on Trump's terms: without social distancing or required masks. As those talks proceed, the convention host committee pushed Thursday for a meeting in Charlotte to "resolve open questions as expeditiously as possible," according to a copy of the invitation.

Those familiar with the call who recounted it for The Post described it as cordial, even as Trump pushed the Democratic governor to overrule public health concerns and accelerate reopening.

"We're in a different situation now," Cooper said at one point. He asked Trump to allow the RNC to negotiate a scaled down event.Trump replied: "We can't do scaled down." At one point during the call, Cooper pushed back, according to the two people familiar with the conversation. He asked Trump whether he was worried about his supporters, and the possibility that they would become sick.

"No, I'm not because we've learned a lot about it," Trump said, referring to the coronavirus.