Will the virus kill bungling Trump’s presidency?
As Wall Street crashes and New York faces quarantine...
JUST weeks ago, he was bragging that ‘America’s economy is the best it’s ever been’ and boasting of the creation of thousands of new jobs and a booming stock market ‘the likes of which the world has never seen’.
At a rally in North Carolina, Donald Trump was at his swaggering showman best, as he stood before a thunderous crowd which was chanting ‘Four more years!’ and ‘Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!’
With a healthy economy, Washington insiders privately believed that November’s presidential election was all but in the bag.
As one pundit told CNN: ‘Trump doesn’t need to do that much. His core base loves him, the economy is booming and the Democrats are struggling to put up a credible alternative. You’d be a fool to bet against Trump.’ But that was before coronavirus. Seemingly overnight, the stock market crashed – and yesterday New York even faced the threat of being quarantined. Trump’s political future is hanging in the balance, and the big question is: will he go down in history as a one-term President?
He didn’t help matters yesterday afternoon when he told reporters: ‘Some people would like to see New York quarantined because it’s a hotspot – New York, New Jersey maybe one or two other places, certain parts of Connecticut quarantined. I’m thinking about that right now.’
The threat to restrict travel to and from the three states shocked New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who said he could not see how a quarantine would work or help – and that Trump had not mentioned it when they spoke just hours earlier.
Meanwhile, the scale of the financial devastation caused by the virus is unprecedented. Markets rallied slightly last week with news of a
$2.2 trillion economic stimulus package, but previous record gains have been wiped out.
And with 3.3million people filing for unemployment insurance, experts fear the jobless total could reach 15million before the crisis abates. Many on Wall Street believe America is heading into the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s.
And the President’s erratic response to the crisis has been what one White House insider calls ‘classic Trumpism’. The source said: ‘He started denying it was a crisis, and then when it became a crisis he blamed everyone else.
‘He has flip-flopped on the message and made some very public missteps such as touting unproven medical “cures” and disagreeing with his own advisers. He’s shown flashes of temper. This has exaggerated all of his failings.’
Critics jumped on the fact that Trump initially dismissed the pandemic as a ‘hoax’ dreamed up by his political rivals. And that he believed a cocktail of anti-malaria drugs and the imminent arrival of a ‘miracle’ vaccine could be a cure. He also predicted the virus would wash away by itself.
Trump then said he wanted America to come out of lockdown by Easter Sunday – ‘because I just thought it was a beautiful timeline.’ That was condemned by some of his own Covid-19 taskforce, including infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci, who said: ‘I can’t jump in front of the microphone and push him down. I don’t want to embarrass him.
You can look at a date but you have to be very flexible.’
Many called the Easter Sunday deadline reckless and said it could potentially cost millions of lives.
Anger greeted Trump’s opinion that the shortage of ventilators was being exaggerated.
An emergency doctor at New York’s Elmhurst Hospital said it was true it hadn’t run out of ventilators but added: ‘The only reason is because people are dying so fast.’
Alan Abramowitz, a political analyst at the University of Virginia, says that it will be the economic downturn more than anything that will ‘very likely doom Trump’s chances of winning a second term’ because he has staked his entire presidency on the booming economy. Abramowitz added: ‘If the recession is severe… the result could well be a defeat of landslide proportions.’
Clearly worried, Trump has gone on the offensive, calling Covid-19 the ‘Chinese virus’ in a direct appeal to those voters who rallied to his Make America Great and Put America First cries in 2016. ‘Trump has always done well with his fanbase by attacking foreigners and his America-against-the-world trope,’ a Washington insider said. A Gallup poll last week showed his approval rating at 49% (up from 44% earlier this month).
Historically, presidential job approval increases when the nation is under threat – George W. Bush enjoyed a 35% surge after 9/11.
And Americans are loathe to change leaders in times of crisis – Franklin D. Roosevelt won a third term on the eve of the Second World War, while George W. Bush clinched his second term after sending troops into Iraq. Trump, as bullish as ever, has awarded himself ‘10 out of 10’ for his handling of the pandemic.
His strategists are also aware that America’s political geography may end up aiding the President.
Democrats hold big cities such as New York and Los Angeles, which have been hit hard by the virus. In contrast, most Trump supporters live in rural states and the Midwest – a vast area that has not been as badly affected by the virus so far.
Inevitably, the crisis has shoved Trump’s most likely opponent, Joe Biden, off prime-time television.
‘It’s Trump, Trump, Trump every day,’ said a CNN source. ‘If he can start to control the narrative, it will be hard to get any opposing views in front of the American people.
‘Ultimately, Trump’s staking it all on his economic stimulus package and the lockdown working. If it works, he will cruise back into the White House.
‘If there is a huge death toll and the economy tanks, then Trump’s gone. The truth is no-one can predict where this is heading. Eight months is a long time in politics.
‘And in this new world we are in, it is an eternity.’
‘He denied the crisis then blamed everyone else’ ‘We could see a defeat of landslide proportions’