Navigating Coronavirus — August 6

In today’s email, we have new Navigator polling on the economy, which has hit its worst point in months — as well as data on how Americans see the troubles with sports restarting as a harbinger of bad things to come with school reopening. We also go through Trump’s series of lies on the pandemic from his Fox News interview yesterday, which revealed just how oblivious he is to the current crisis.

Read on for today’s Navigating Coronavirus…

It’s been 162 days since President Trump said we’d soon have zero cases in the U.S. We now have about 5 million cases and 162,000 deaths.

TOP TREND …

• Ratings of the economy are at their worst point in 3 months. 81% now rate the economy negatively, including two-thirds of Republicans — as a growing number of Americans (now 60%) believe it’s getting worse.

THE LATEST

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

TRUMP IS SPREADING DISINFORMATION AND DOWNPLAYING THE PANDEMIC EVEN AS CASES SURGE AND DEATHS SKYROCKET.

In an interview with Fox & Friends yesterday, Trump lied repeatedly, including peddling dangerous disinformation about the severity of the pandemic. Some of his claims were so egregious that Facebook even took down one of Trump’s posts for the first time for violating their policy about sharing false COVID-19 information.

Today, we’re spotlighting his three biggest lies on the pandemic.

TRUMP LIE #1 >> THE VIRUS “WILL GO AWAY LIKE THINGS GO AWAY”

THE TRUTH >> “TRUMP IS STILL NOT GRASPING THE SEVERITY OF THE PANDEMIC”

Even as cases surge and the death toll rises, Trump continues to downplay the pandemic. His refusal to accept reality and his failure to respond is making this crisis worse.

• AP: “Virus testing in the US is dropping, even as deaths mount”
• NYT: “‘It’s Like Having No Testing’: Coronavirus Test Results Are Still Delayed”
• Washington Post: “With Bad Coronavirus News At Home, Trump Points Misleadingly To Rising Cases Abroad”

And if his downplaying isn’t enough, he refuses to take responsibility and is actively lying to deflect blame.

TRUMP LIE #2 >> “THE COUNTRY HAS DONE A GREAT JOB ON THE CORONA”

THE TRUTH >> “ONE DEATH EVERY 80 SECONDS: THE GRIM NEW TOLL OF COVID-19 IN AMERICA”

This week we’re seeing some of the deadliest days of the summer, and for nine days in a row, more than 1,000 Americans died from the virus. But Trump is still denying this reality and rebuking medical experts and his top health advisers.

• AP: “Chasm grows between Trump and government coronavirus experts”
• Business Insider: “‘Numbers don’t lie’: Fauci says you can’t deny the US has the world’s worst COVID-19 outbreak”
• NAVIGATOR DATA >> More and more Americans (now more than 6 in 10) believe our pandemic response is worse than the rest of the world, up 12 points in the past few months.

TRUMP LIE #3 >> “IF YOU LOOK AT CHILDREN, CHILDREN ARE ALMOST — I WOULD ALMOST SAY DEFINITELY — BUT ALMOST IMMUNE FROM THIS DISEASE.”

THE TRUTH >> “YOUNG CHILDREN CAN HARBOR 100 TIMES MORE COVID-19 PARTICLES IN THEIR NOSES AND THROATS THAN ADULTS”

Yesterday, Trump doubled down on his push to force schools to open, spreading disinformation, dismissing science, and putting teachers, students, and their families in danger.

• NBC: “COVID-19 and children: Doctors see link between virus and neurological side effects”
• CNN: “Quit my job, or risk serious illness? Parents and teachers face grueling decisions as schools reopen”
• ABC: “Students at school touted by Pence for reopening must quarantine due to COVID-19”

*NEW* NAVIGATOR TRACKING POLL

TODAY’S FULL SLIDE DECK >> HERE

• Extending unemployment benefits remains very popular, as Americans are set to blame Trump and Republicans for their expiration. Two-thirds of Americans support the policy, and among them, more than half blame Trump and Republicans for not extending them.

• A plurality of Americans oppose restarting professional sports and see rising infections among sports teams as a sign of the danger of reopening schools and easing social distancing.

ECONOMIC CRISIS IN CONTEXT

The latest on how the economic crisis sparked by coronavirus is being fueled by President Trump’s actions and years of conservative economic policies, focusing today on Trump-McConnell’s continued obstruction of expanded unemployment benefits and the economic pain that’s causing for workers and families.

Pressure on Trump and his allies continues to grow as workers and the economy feel the pain from their refusal to extend expanded unemployment benefits.

• YESTERDAY >> Businesses substantially slowed hiring in July, worse than analysts expected.
• TODAY >> We expect to see another week of record-breaking unemployment.

Democrats have been united for months in their insistence on protecting the incomes of 30 million unemployed workers during a pandemic, while Trump and his allies pushed past the deadline and are now scrambling under pressure from people across the country.

• Trump and McConnell have already hurt millions of workers and pushed a fragile economy even closer to collapse — and now they need to move quickly to fix the problem they created.
• A new paper from Groundwork and NELP highlights how, despite what Trump and his allies claim, “Most unemployment claimants are probably earning less on unemployment than they did at their previous jobs.”
• Another new study: “More generous unemployment benefits lead to better jobs”

In addition to cutting the incomes of 30 million Americans, Trump and his allies have also allowed a moratorium on evictions to expire, threatening to create an unprecedented “wave of evictions” unless Congress moves quickly.

• As Trump slashes these people’s incomes, the costs of groceries and other day-to-day expenses continue to grow, “exacerbating concerns that the recession’s long tail could worsen food insecurity for years to come.”
• Trump may not have created this crisis, but his economic policies and mismanagement are making it much longer and more painful than it needs to be.

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Navigating Coronavirus is a joint project of Governing for Impact, Groundwork Collaborative, The Hub Project, and Navigator Research.

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