To answer Trump, life worse in many ways 4 years ago

Former president asked voters if they are better off under Biden, but this week in 2020, virus crisis began

Donald Trump posed an allbut-shouted query on his social media platform last week, echoing a talking point that has recently become popular in Republican circles: “ARE YOU BETTER OFF THAN YOU WERE FOUR YEARS AGO?”

The clear implication from

Trump and his allies is that the country was thriving in 2020 when he was president in a way that it is not now under President Joe Biden. But the reality is far more complicated.

Four years ago this week, the stock market was collapsing — hitting its worst week since the Great Recession of 2008 — as the country spiraled into a years-long pandemic that claimed more than 1 million American lives, cratered the economy, upended daily life and, arguably, helped cost Trump a second term in the White House.

The third week of March 2020 — four years before Trump sent his query — reveals a nation that was on the precipice of crisis, and a leader exhibiting the full panoply of characteristics his supporters love and his detractors revile.

Reported COVID-19 cases exploded that week, growing from 588 to 3,659, and COVID-19 deaths more than tripled, from 16 on Sunday the 15th to 52 the following Saturday. Over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump regularly indulged in his most combative and erratic impulses, alienating large swaths of the public along the way.

During that seven-day stretch, Trump promised the country had “tremendous control” over the virus and that “we’re winning it.” In fact, the opposite was true.

Throughout the year, Trump rarely agreed to wear a mask — publicly undermining the advice of his own health experts — and at one point suggested injecting disinfectant as a possible treatment.

He held near-daily news conferences — spectacles he came to view as ratings bonanzas rather than serious information sessions for desperate and terrified Americans. He diminished and feuded with his team of scientists and public health officials, and he ultimately contracted COVID-19 himself, having to be airlifted from the White House to the hospital.

Voters did not blame Trump for the pandemic, a once-in-alifetime calamity thrust upon the entire globe, but they did fault his response to it.

From May 2020 through November 2020, polls consistently showed most Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, and most polls showed Trump’s ratings for his handling of the pandemic were worse than his overall job performance.

Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who conducts weekly focus groups with voters, said Trump critics like herself are answering his question literally “and if you answer it literally, Trump loses every time.”

But three years after Trump left office, polls show some of the voters who helped oust him are looking back on his administration more favorably now, either forgetting or willing to look past much of the chaos and mayhem that characterized his presidency. In interviews, some speak of his first term with a sense of gauzy nostalgia and rate his performance better than Biden’s.

Trump and his campaign seem to be posing the question in a less literal and more emotional way: Do you, the voter, feel better off under Biden than you did under Trump?

Biden and his campaign, meanwhile, have seized on Trump’s question to try to remind voters of what they didn’t like about the Trump years, including his bungled COVID-19 response.

Speaking Wednesday in Dallas, Biden said he was “glad” Trump had posed the question, urging the country to think back to life in March 2020.

Sunday, March 15

COVID-19 closures were already sweeping across Europe when Trump appeared in the White House briefing room early Sunday evening, to assure the nation while he and his team were paying close attention to what was happening in other countries, the United States was doing fine.

COVID-19, he acknowledged, is “a very contagious virus.” But, he added quickly, “it’s something that we have tremendous control over.”

By then, it had become clear Trump had drastically oversold a potential Google project to help connect citizens with drivethrough testing locations. And it had also emerged in news reports a birthday party Trump had hosted at his private Mar-a-Lago Club a week earlier had become a potential superspreader event — offering an early glimpse of Trump’s reckless stance toward the safety protocols surrounding the virus.

Monday, March 16

The day became known as “Black Monday II,” one of three days that month when COVID-19inspired sell-offs were so extreme the New York Stock Exchange temporarily paused trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted nearly 3,000 points, wiping out almost 13% of its value.

The cratering stock market presaged the coming economic calamity, including the unemployment rate that would more than triple to a high of 13% at its 2020 peak, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Facing pressure from his health team, Trump did roll out more robust recommendations to try to halt the spread of the virus that Monday, urging Americans to stop discretionary travel, to conduct home schooling, and to avoid bars, restaurants and gatherings of more than 10 people. But his guidelines were suggestions, rather than the mandatory requirements recommended by many experts.

That same day, Trump in a tweet described COVID-19, which had originated in China, as “the Chinese Virus” — the sort of racially insensitive language that critics and experts alike worried could prompt increased discrimination against Asian Americans.

And when asked how he would rate his response to the pandemic on a scale of one to 10, Trump gave himself high marks.

“I’d rate it a 10,” he said. “I think we’ve done a great job.”

Tuesday, March 17

Trump defended his description of COVID-19 as “the Chinese virus,” rejecting the suggestion such language was offensive.

Several hours later, during a meeting with tourism executives, Trump repeated the description, saying the group planned to discuss “what’s happened since the Chinese virus came about.”

Underscoring the severity of the growing pandemic, Trump dispatched Treasury Security Steven Mnuchin to begin pitching Republicans on Capitol Hill on a $1 trillion stimulus plan, which would include $250 billion in checks directly to millions of Americans.

“We want to go big, go solid,” Trump said, appearing next to Mnuchin in the White House briefing room.

Trump also began trying to rewrite history. After long downplaying the virus, he suddenly claimed he had “always known this is a real — this is a pandemic.”

Wednesday, March 18

Declaring himself a “wartime president,” Trump said he would invoke the Defense Production Act to compel manufacturing of medical supplies — “just in case we need it.” For critics, the move came too late.

“People are struggling right now,” former U.S. surgeon general Vivek H. Murthy said at the time. “They’re running out of masks and gowns and gloves, right now.”

But Trump was still sunny at a briefing. “We’re winning it,” he said. “We will win. … It’s going to go quickly.”

Thursday, March 19

Trump doubled down on blaming China for the virus at a briefing the next day. A Washington Post photographer caught a glimpse of his notes — the word “corona” crossed out and replaced with “Chinese” in thick black pen.

But the headlines this Thursday were focused on a new controversy: Trump’s optimism an antimalarial drug called hydroxychloroquine could prove effective against COVID-19. Federal health officials said it needed more study as a potential treatment, and a high-quality trial eventually found it was no better than a placebo.

But Trump was effusive and said it could be a “game changer.”

Friday, March 20

With U.S. cases ballooning to 14,000 and shutdowns mounting — California had just issued a stay-at-home order for its 40 million residents — an NBC News reporter asked the president for his message to “Americans who are watching you right now who are scared.”

“I say that you’re a terrible reporter, that’s what I say,” Trump retorted from the briefing room podium. “I think it’s a very nasty question.”

He berated the reporter several more times during the session.

Saturday, March 21

By the end of the week, cases had topped 20,000 in the United States and 300,000 worldwide. U.S. deaths had passed 300, and congressional leaders were preparing to meet about the economic rescue plan. Some in the media began to question the value of streaming Trump’s coronavirus briefings live. “There is a very real possibility that in broadcasting these press conferences live or in quickly publishing and blasting out his words in mobile alerts, we are actively misinforming our audience,” said Alex Koppelman, the managing editor of CNN Business. At the daily briefing, thenWhite House coronavirus adviser Anthony Fauci was asked about a Trump tweet touting the promise of hydroxychloroquine and an antibiotic “taken together” and declaring that the FDA had “moved mountains.” “I’m not totally sure what the president was referring to,” Fauci responded.