Just days ago, President Trump was insisting the country would be “opened up and just raring to go by Easter.” That would mean ending his federal social-distancing guidelines, purportedly giving the American people their lives back again.
But then came polls showing that his approval ratings are soaring in this time of corona. This, despite his notorious dilly-dallying in the face of pleas for federal assistance to fight the virus. Not to mention media complaints about his daily corona press conferences, which amount to little more than Trump propagating campaign slogans, prattling brazen lies, and puffing himself up.
By all accounts, he has handled this crisis worse than any president has handled any crisis in US history. Therefore, you’d be forgiven for expecting his poll numbers to reflect this prevailing view.
But early reviews of Trump’s handling of the crisis suggest that’s not necessarily the case. …
Trump’s 47.3% approval rating in Real Clear Politics’ average of polls is his highest since taking office: He’s up 5 points to 49% in a new ABC/Washington Post poll, up 1 point to 48% in a Fox News poll and up 1 point to 45% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
(USA Today, March 29, 2020)
As the TV ratings, you need only turn yours on to understand why this amoral narcissist is so pleased. Because one of the more perverse features of this lockdown is that his daily press conferences have become the kind of must-see TV the Dear Leader Kim Jong-un’s infamous proclamations are in North Korea.
Despite his captive audience, though, Trump’s infantile ego is such that he cannot help stroking it even during these macabre conferences. For example, only he could seemingly bemoan refrigerated trucks as makeshift morgues lining the streets of his boyhood home in Queens in one sentence, and then gloat about the ratings he’s generating even for fake news media like CNN in the very next.
Anyway, this is why nobody should have been surprised when he made this about-face today:
During Sunday’s White House briefing, President Trump said federal guidance urging social distancing will stay in place through April 30. He backed off of his hope that the country will be ‘opened up’ by Easter Sunday, saying that deaths due to the coronavirus will likely peak in two weeks. ‘Nothing would be worse than declaring victory before the victory is won,’ he said.
(The Washington Post, March 29, 2020)
Ha! Trust me, the only reason Trump was pushing to open up by Easter Sunday is that he feared depression-like joblessness, the rising death toll, and a plummeting stock market would mean cratering poll numbers – all signifying nails in the coffin of his re-election campaign.
But it says all one needs to know about the dystopian character of his presidency that he might regard this coronavirus as the best thing that ever happened to it.
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