Trump slammed for virus responses
WASHINGTON — Less than three weeks from Election Day, majorities of Americans are highly critical of President Donald Trump’s handling of both the coronavirus pandemic and his own illness, according to a new poll from the Associated PRESS-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
The survey also shows that few Americans have high levels of trust in the information the White House has released about Trump’s health. Initial accounts of the president’s condition were murky and contradictory, and the White House is still refusing to say when the president last tested negative for COVID-19 before his infection became public.
Trump’s illness and hospitalization has refocused the critical final stretch of the presidential campaign on the pandemic, which has killed more than 216,000people in the United States this year. Democratic challenger Joe Biden has sought to make the election a referendum on the president’s handling of the virus, arguing that Trump has mismanaged the pandemic and cost Americans lives.
The AP-NORC poll suggests many Americans agree with that sentiment, with 65 percent saying Trumphas not taken the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. seriously enough. Thepoll, whichwas taken a week after Trump disclosed his own COVID-19 diagnosis, also shows that 54 percent of Americans disapprove with how the White House handled the episode.
The Rev. Joseph Wiseman, a 49year-old registered Republican and Biden supporter from Wichita, Kan., is among them. Wiseman said hewas turned off by the presi
dent’s “cavalier attitude” toward the pandemic and what he saw as Trump’s “disregard for the health and well-being” of people around himwhowere exposed to the virus at White House events, as well as when the president drove in a vehicle with Secret Service agents to greet supporters during his hospital stay.
“I think that fromthe start to the finish that he came through quite rapidly and he’s back out there,” said Jim Gula, 71, a Republican and Trump supporter from Jacksonville, Fla. “And I think that’s a reflection on the overall people who have come down with a positive test.”
With early voting already underway in much of the country, na
tional polls show Biden leading Trump by a comfortable margin, though many battleground states remain competitive. The president is spending much of this week campaigning in states that should be comfortable territory for him, including Iowa and Georgia, which hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since 1992.
Trump heads into Election Day with a 39 percent overall approval rating from Americans, on par with his approval ratings over the course of his presidency. But there are other warning signs for him in the AP-NORC poll.
Seventy-four percent of Americans say the country is heading in the wrong direction, including half of Republicans.