In times of crisis,
people need to believe in something, and they usually turn to the leader
of their country for solace and fortitude. Americans are no different,
rallying around various presidents in times of trouble such as the Cuban
Missile crisis, the Iranian hostage crisis, and more recently 9/11. In
fact, George W. Bush logged some of the highest approval ratings in
history shortly after the 9/11 attacks, hitting 90% in Gallup's poll and 80%-plus in most other polls, a roughly 40-point spike.
In late March, it appeared that Trump might be enjoying a
similar—if very modest—phenomenon, with a slight uptick in his overall
job approval rating. He hit the highest mark of his presidency in Gallup
at 49%, but as I noted yesterday,
only got a modest bump of a few points in an aggregation of polling. As
journalists noticed that uptick, they began to think Trump's dominance
at the White House coronavirus Task Force briefings was working in his favor. The briefings began in late February, but Trump didn't begin taking a real interest in them until about mid-March, when he was forced to cancel his beloved campaign rallies. That's when the real Trump coronavirus dog and pony show began.
The empty pageantry was perhaps best encapsulated in a March,
Friday-the-13th appearance in the Rose Garden in which Trump declared a
national emergency and rolled out an aggressive testing initiative that
still hasn't materialized to this day.
One by one, Trump called a bunch
of corporate titans to the mic who where supposedly stepping up to make
widespread testing available across the country—an initiative he’s
already pulling the plug on. The
topper was the supposed launch of a testing website that didn't
actually exist yet and was never intended for broad public use. It still
doesn't exist. About a month later, a raft of new polling shows Trump
has already burned through whatever benefit of the doubt the public had
given him.
Multiple polls released this week from CNN,
Quinnipiac, Monmouth, and others show Trump is underwater by at least
several points in his handling of the national coronavirus response.
Similarly, Trump's overall job approvals have almost all started
reverting back to pre-coronavirus levels. The Reuters/Ipsos graph
below on Trump's COVID approvals shows the clearest trajectory of how
Trump initially seemed to benefit from his increased presence at the
Task Force briefings. Note Trump's crossover into positive territory
around mid-March and then his reversion to negative territory around the
beginning of April. In the poll, Trump currently sits at 53%
disapproval/42% approval for his handling of the coronavirus.
Anecdotally, journalists and opinion writers are starting to
clue into the fact that Trump may have already snuffed out
his opportunity to be seen as a decisive leader heading into an election
that will now clearly be a referendum on his handling of the national
response to COVID. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal editorial board lamented "Trump's Wasted Briefings."
"A friend of ours who voted for President Trump sent us a note
recently saying that she had stopped watching the daily White House
briefings of the coronavirus task force," the board wrote in its lede.
"Why? Because they have become less about defeating the virus and more
about the many feuds of Donald J. Trump."
In fact, the more reliant Trump has become on the briefings,
the more combative and useless they have likewise become. More and more,
the real experts stand silenced behind Trump while he blathers on for
an hour-plus, mostly spewing disinformation and lashing out at
journalists. Trump clearly forgot the briefings weren't actually about
him, they were about the American people. Just like with everything
Trump takes over, he was bound to corrupt it until it became useless.
But this time, Trump managed to do it publicly, every day, on an urgent
matter of life and death.
Perhaps one of the most damning data points to emerge in
these polls is that people don’t think Trump is pulling out all the
stops to save lives. The Reuters/Ipsos poll found that just 38% of
Americans were satisfied that Trump’s administration was doing
everything possible to stop the virus, while 47% said they were not
satisfied. CNN asked whether Trump could be doing more to fight the epidemic, and 55%
said he could while just 43% said he’s doing everything possible. In
both instances, Trump is roughly 10 points underwater on the question of
whether he’s making every effort possible to save American lives.
Just think about that for a second. We haven’t even hit the apex in
terms of total deaths claimed by the virus. Imagine how much more
enraged people will be when they tragically lose a loved one to a
disease they believe Trump only made a half-hearted effort to combat.
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