April 9, 2020
President Donald Trump's job approval has taken a
negative turn as a growing number of Americans harbor doubts about his handling
of the coronavirus crisis. After seeing a late-March spike as the pandemic
ravaged the U.S., his approval ratings have fallen back to the mid-40-percent
range, where they were before the death toll and jobless claims exploded.
The latest numbers suggest the
surge in job approval that presidents tend to enjoy during a crisis was modest
and short-lived for Trump. New polls this week by Quinnipiac, Reuters and CNN
all find disapproval of Trump's handling of the coronavirus rising to a
majority of Americans.
Trump's messaging strategy has been to portray
himself as a wartime president leading the country to victory. The president
has led televised briefings on the pandemic almost every day, flanked by
medical specialists and top officials at the White House podium. But he has
tended to veer off-topic into a rally-like atmosphere with a mixture of
self-congratulation, derisive nicknames to mock political rivals, blaming his
predecessor for recent failures in COVID-19 testing, picking fights with
reporters, and issuing a stream of dubious or false assertions.
Hopefully voters will have long memories when November rolls
around.
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