WASHINGTON — Riding Air Force One with President Trump back to the nation’s capital on Monday afternoon felt eerily like that grim day in 2005 when President George W. Bush was flying to the White House to confront the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina.

As the legendary blue-and-white Boeing 747 soared above the clouds, the televisions on board were tuned to wall-to-wall news coverage of a country in crisis below. The ravages of the coronavirus and the market meltdown this week, like the ravages of that storm 15 years ago, played out on the screens for hours — urgently, relentlessly, inexorably, inescapably.