After weeks underwater, the public’s approval of President Trump’s response to the coronavirus has steadily increased, with a new ABC News poll finding 55% of the nation now approving. Just a week ago, the majority disapproved.
A significant factor here, obviously, is just Trump’s behavior. After a month of trying to downplay the pandemic, Trump is finally demonstrating that he’s taking it seriously. Although Trump’s initial instinct to restrict travel from China was eminently correct, he spent a month dangerously downplaying the virus. Prior to any of the quarantining chaos or market crashes, Trump boasted that we had the coronavirus “very much under control” and that “we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time.” But since the coronavirus blew up into a full pandemic, Trump has changed his tune, now holding nearly daily briefings with widely respected health officials.
But more importantly, as the actual crisis has set in, people have had less time to focus on partisanship as they face real financial punishments. Sure, Trump may bait the media into debating whether it’s racist to call the coronavirus the “China virus,” but if you just lost your income and your health insurance because the city shut down your employer, you care that the government is providing immediate cash relief to the public, not what Trump is tweeting.
It’s possible that the coronavirus once again baits Trump’s worst instincts, but if he continues to allow the Anthony Faucis of the government to dictate policy, the public will become increasingly disinterested in the political theater of Washington. Hence, Trump’s approval on the issue will continue to increase, and as always, both his supporters and detractors will try to derive too much meaning from it.
