Tag: Coronavirus

Keep Talking Trump. You’re Getting Less Popular Each Day

Trish
From RealClearPolitics.com

New polls are showing the limits of Americans rallying around their leader in times of crisis.

The more Trump crows during his daily free TV rally that his poll numbers are excellent, the more they show signs of declining. After Trump tweeted a New York Times quote that said, “President Trump is a ratings hit,” Never Trumper Rick Wilson responded:

“This is what you are to him, Americans. An audience. Not his constituents. Not the people who hired him. Not even humans. You’re boxes in a spreadsheet of his Nielsen ratings.”

[…]

Trump Has the Death Touch — Literally

Buck Banks

“It was inevitable that Trump would face a crisis immune to tweets or stupid memes or insulting nicknames. The damage he does to everyone and everything around him has become an iron law of American politics, an invariable and inevitable process. Still, I didn’t think it extended to everyone in the country; that it would produce actual bodies stacked like cordwood in a preventable, slow-rolling pandemic. When I wrote ‘Everything Trump Touches Dies,’ I didn’t mean it literally. … Donald Trump seems intent on proving me wrong.”

— Rick Wilson

Most Say Trump Should Have Responded Sooner

Buck Banks

53% to 34%

“By a 53% to 34% margin, more believe a quicker response from the federal government could have slowed the spread of coronavirus in the U.S. than say it is so contagious that nothing could have prevented it spreading the way it has. Some 30% of Republicans join 73% of Democrats in saying the government could have made a difference had it acted faster.” — Fox News poll

Contrasts with South Korea Show How Badly Trump Team Failed at Early COVID-19 Efforts

Trish

There are facts that won’t change as the COVID-19 virus spreads, and the bungling of the crisis by the Trump Administration is etched in stone.

A story by Reuters contrasts the South Korean response with that of the United States. It ain’t pretty for the U.S. Both countries discovered their first cases on the same day but South Korea acted decisively, pioneered drive-through testing, and slowed the spread of the disease.

South Korea’s swift action stands in stark contrast to what has transpired in the United States…the Koreans have tested well over 290,000 people and identified over 8,000 infections. New cases are falling off: Ninety-three were reported Wednesday, down from a daily peak of 909 two weeks earlier.

The United States, whose first case was detected the same day as South Korea’s, is not even close to meeting demand for testing. About 60,000 tests have been run by public and private labs in a country of 330 million, federal officials said Tuesday.

As a result, U.S. officials don’t fully grasp how many Americans have been infected and where they are concentrated – crucial to containment efforts.

Read the whole Reuters special report.

Trump Tells Governors to Get Their Own Medical Equipment

Buck Banks

“Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves… We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.”

— “President Trump told a group of governors Monday morning that they should not wait for the federal government to fill the growing demand for respirators needed to help people diagnosed with coronavirus,” the New York Times reports.