Since late Thursday night, the White House and its allies in the media have been working tirelessly to spin Donald Trump’s coronavirus infection and portray the news as beneficial to his reelection campaign. One of the main talking points used by the president’s defense squad has been the claim that Trump testing positive for COVID-19 won’t hurt him but will, in fact, give him a winning advantage over Joe Biden, even as updates have come out suggesting that his case of COVID-19 may be severe.
“The president has coronavirus right now, he is battling it head-on as toughly, as only President Trump can. And of course that’s going to change the way that he speaks of it because it will be a firsthand experience,” said Trump campaign aide Erin Perrine during a Monday appearance on Fox News. She went on to tout her boss’s personal “experience, now, fighting the coronavirus as an individual,” listing his ongoing struggle with a virus that has killed more than 210,000 people in the United States alongside his “experience as commander in chief” and “as a businessman,” which she noted are all CV details that Biden lacks. “Those firsthand experiences are what are going to get President Trump four more years,” Perrine concluded.
Her rosy assessment was similar to comments made by some sycophantic Trumpworld pundits in the immediate aftermath of the test heard round the world. Fox News host Steve Hilton claimed that, if Trump does make “a quick recovery,” his struggle with coronavirus will lead more voters to turn out for him than if he hadn’t caught the virus, as he is now a living “metaphor for the recovery of the country.”
However, this blindly optimistic line does not appear to be hold up to reality. Nearly three out of four Americans believe that Trump failed to take the “risk of contracting the virus seriously enough” and did not follow through with “the appropriate precautions when it came to his personal health,” according to two questions in a poll conducted by ABC News and Ipsos over the weekend. It wasn’t solely Democratic respondents who expressed little sympathy for the president; 43% of Republicans surveyed agreed with roughly 95% of Democrats in criticizing his “mindset and preventative actions regarding the coronavirus.” A separate poll from Reuters and Ipsos found that 65% of respondents, including 90% of the Democrats and 50% of the Republicans, voiced their belief that Trump would likely have avoided his infection had he “taken coronavirus more seriously.” A new CNN poll found that roughly two-thirds of the voters who participated do not believe that Trump acted “responsibly handling the virus risk to those around him.” And a majority of respondents trust “just some” or “none” of what they hear in official White House communications about Trump‘s health.
By Monday afternoon, after a much-derided joyride to greet his supporters outside Walter Reed, Trump claimed he was “Feeling really good”—well enough to ditch the medical center’s uniquely prepared safety net. He also cited his own experience with the virus, which has included an experimental drug that has yet to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and some of the best health care available in the country, to continue downplaying its severe health risks, assuring Americans that they shouldn’t “be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.”
While in theory the president’s health struggles could result in a faction of sympathy votes, his campaign is also hurting in key swing states following his disastrous debate performance on Tuesday. After Trump defaulted to all-out attack mode against Biden in Cleveland, Pennsylvania and Florida voters responded by rejecting his hostility; a New York Times and Siena College survey found that the Democratic nominee’s lead in the two key swing states has ballooned. In Pennsylvania, Biden jumped to a seven point lead, with likely voters expressing support for him over the president 49% to 42%. He also built a sizable five-point lead with likely Florida voters.
These polls make it clear that there are consequences for a debate showing as disastrous as Trump’s, and that voters appear more inclined to blame him for the night’s ugliness. Coincidentally, one of Trump’s debate quotes, which—for all the wrong reasons—is now one of his most memorable, might also help explain why so few Americans are willing to sympathize with the hospitalized president, even as he grapples with a disease that’s known to be most dangerous for patients in his age demographic. “I don’t wear face masks like him,” Trump said, mocking Biden’s consistent use of face coverings on his campaign stops. “Every time you see him he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away…and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”
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