Navigating Coronavirus — April 17

6 min readApr 17, 2020

It’s been 51 days since President Trump said we’d soon have zero cases in the U.S. We now have 677,000 cases and 34,600 deaths — more deaths than any other country in the world.

IF YOU ONLY READ ONE SECTION …

Trump is out of touch with Americans on social distancing. By 47 points overall (69–22%) and 44 points among Independents (58–14%), the public trusts state/local gov’t over Trump to end social distancing — and by a 2-to-1 margin (56–28%), Americans are more concerned that social distancing will end too soon vs. last too long and hurt the economy.

Trump approval is back to pre-crisis levels. Trump is 10 points underwater (44–54%), and his handling of coronavirus is 6 points underwater (46–52%). Governors meanwhile have a 70% coronavirus approval rating.

THE LATEST

Message guidance on the latest developments with President Trump’s handling of the crisis.

1. Trump is blaming others and avoiding responsibility for this crisis — and yesterday’s social distancing “guidelines” were just the latest example.

Trump’s leadership has been irresponsible, and his handling of social distancing continues to be chaotic. That’s why Americans don’t trust him to solve this crisis.

CNN: “In a retreat from his onetime claim of ‘absolute authority’ to restart the economy, he told governors on a telephone call it was their decision on when and how to reopen. ‘You are going to call your own shots,’ Trump said.”
NEW NAVIGATOR DATA >> Americans trust state/local leaders 26 points more than Trump on handling coronavirus (57–31%) and Democrats in Congress two points more than Trump (44–42%), an 8-point net shift from when we started tracking (Trump 45–39%).
MORE DATA >> The number of people who believe Trump too often blames others and dodges responsibility has gone up 6 points in our tracking (from 53% to 59%).

As 30,000 Americans die, Trump’s dishonest claims of widespread testing and his dangerous rush to end social distancing will put lives at risk.

2. Trump’s failure to take the outbreak seriously has made this crisis worse and led to more than 22 million Americans losing their jobs.

>> NEW NAVIGATOR DATA: 62% have serious concerns that Trump spent weeks downplaying the threat and failing to take action sooner that could have prevented it from getting to this point, and a majority (54%) is concerned that his failure to prepare and respond to the outbreak caused many businesses to close and led to millions of Americans losing their jobs.

Despite exploding unemployment, Trump still is not getting financial help to those who need it most, as he puts those at the top ahead of workers and the middle class.

WaPo: Glitches prevent $1,200 stimulus checks from reaching millions of Americans
Trump’s Paycheck Protection Program may be out of money, but many small businesses haven’t seen money as wealthy investors dip in for their share.

Trump is dodging oversight of how he spends $2 trillion in taxpayer dollars, as Americans overwhelmingly believe he favors the rich and big corporations.

NEW NAVIGATOR DATA >> 61% are seriously concerned that Trump thinks he can just do whatever he wants as president and has rejected watchdog attempts to monitor how the $2 trillion is being spent.
MORE DATA >> By 14 points, people say Trump’s policy response favors the wealthy/corporations over workers/middle class (48–34%), while people say Democrats in Congress prioritize workers/middle class over wealthy/corporations by 21 points (48–27%).

NEW NAVIGATOR TRACKING NUMBERS …

TODAY’S POLLING DECK >> HERE

FULL TOPLINES >> HERE

There’s broad support for the fact that Congress took action in response to coronavirus, but there’s a lot of room to define priorities. More than eight in ten Americans support the pandemic relief bills that have been passed so far (82%). But independents and Democrats believe that the majority of the assistance is going to the wealthy and corporations over the working/middle class.

Democrats do have an edge on who they’re fighting for. By 14 points, Americans say Trump’s policy response favors the wealthy/corporations over workers/middle class — but they believe Democrats in Congress favor workers/middle class by 21 points.

Trump isn’t meeting Americans’ expectations of leadership. A majority of Americans believe that Trump should be leading the national response on distributing medical supplies, but nearly half think that he has been doing the opposite.

ECONOMIC CRISIS IN CONTEXT

The latest on how the economic crisis sparked by coronavirus is actually fueled by years of Trump’s conservative economic policies, focusing today on the past month’s historically catastrophic rise in unemployment.

Trump’s conservative economic policies are making this crisis so much much worse for workers and families than it needed to be.

22 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the past month, and millions more have lost most or all of their income and are struggling to keep their heads above the water — and because Trump is more focused on helping corporations than workers and families, this is only going to get worse.
Since our broken health care system is too often tied to employment, far too many workers losing their jobs are also losing their health insurance, which is catastrophic during a public health crisis when we need people to get the testing and treatment they need.
Trump and his administration are focused on propping up big business and protecting shareholders from financial losses while ignoring millions of workers who have lost their jobs and their health care.

It is clearer than ever that Congress must move quickly to fix Trump’s mistakes by enacting policies that prioritize workers and families and make the structural changes needed to make our economy more resilient over the long term.

Despite the Trump Administration’s claims, $1,200 is not enough for workers and families to survive for long following years of wage stagnation that prevented them from building a savings cushion. Money needs to continue to flow where it’s most needed: into the pockets of families, not corporations.
This is a lesson that must be learned: When economic policies are focused on helping the rich and not investing in everyone, then the economy won’t truly be strong and recessions like this one will be deeper and more painful than they need to be.