On the wrong track
Most skeptical of Trump’s handling of virus pandemic
Poll finds most Americans are pessimistic about the direction of the country.
Less than seven weeks before Election Day, most Americans are deeply pessimistic about the direction of the country and skeptical of President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Roughly 7 in 10 Americans think the nation is on the wrong track, according to a new poll from The Associated PRESS-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. It’s an assessment that poses a challenge for Trump as he urges voters to reward him with four more years in office instead of handing the reins of government to Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump’s argument to voters hinges in part on persuading Americans that the pandemic, which has killed nearly 200,000 people in the U.S., is receding. Yet just 39 percent of Americans approve of how Trump is handling the outbreak.
Most Americans have more favorable views of health officials than of the Republican president as they have throughout the pandemic. Seventy-eight percent say they have some or great confidence in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency at the forefront of crafting recommendations for how Americans can best protect themselves from the highly contagious coronavirus.
Yet the White House has repeatedly sought to assert more control over the CDC. On Wednesday, Trump publicly undercut CDC Director Robert Redfield on the likely timeline for vaccine availability and the effectiveness of wearing face masks.
Redfield told lawmakers that a vaccine — if approved, and none has been — would likely not be widely available to Americans until at least the middle of next year. Trump disputed that, saying a vaccine could begin to be rolled out as soon as next month — just ahead of the presidential election — and be broadly available soon after.
Trump was also at odds with Redfield over masks, which the president says he supports but rarely wears. Redfield told lawmakers that wearing a mask is “more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine.” The president said the opposite was true.
Through his words and actions, Trump has increasingly been trying to convey the impression that the nation is moving past the pandemic.
Despite Trump’s optimistic words about the pandemic, the majority of Americans — 69 percent — are still at least somewhat worried about themselves or family members being infected with the virus.
Assessments of the state of the pandemic are split along partisan lines. Eighty-three percent of Democrats say they are at least somewhat concerned about the virus, compared with 55 percent of Republicans.