Navigating Coronavirus — May 19

5 min readMay 19, 2020

It’s been 82 days since President Trump said we’d soon have zero cases in the U.S. We now have 1,550,000 cases and 91,900 deaths — more deaths than any other country in the world.

WHAT TO EXPECT…

THE LATEST: Trump puts Americans at risk with his unproven medical advice, while he blames others for this crisis.
NAVIGATOR TRACKING: Disapproval of Trump’s handling of the economy is at a record high.
ECONOMIC CRISIS IN CONTEXT: Trump and his allies are fighting for massive corporations while workers and families continue to suffer.

THE LATEST

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

TRUMP PUSHES DANGEROUS MADE-UP MEDICAL CLAIMS.

Instead of talking about promising vaccines, Trump continues to push discredited and dangerous drugs, now claiming he is taking hydroxychloroquine. It’s one thing for him to endanger himself, but another for him to encourage others to follow his idiotic path.

REMINDER>>
WAPO: “FDA warns about hydroxychloroquine dangers, citing serious heart issues, including death”
USA TODAY: “‘Medication I can’t live without’: Lupus patients struggle to get hydroxychloroquine, in demand for COVID-19”
AP: “More deaths, no benefit in VA virus study”

Americans are deeply concerned by Trump continuing to push dangerous medical advice and believe his actions are putting people at risk.

NAVIGATOR DATA >> 60% of Americans are concerned that Trump makes decisions that ignore or overrule the advice of health and medical experts.
MORE >> This translates to Americans’ concerns about Republicans in Congress. The latest deep dive Navigator polling showed that 57% of Americans have serious concerns that Republicans in Congress refuse to stand up to President Trump, especially when he ignores public health experts and puts people’s lives at risk.

2. TRUMP KEEPS BLAMING OTHERS FOR HIS FAILURES.

Instead of taking responsibility for this crisis and leading a national response, Trump keeps blaming others.

NPR: “President Trump has been falsely laying blame on Obama for leaving the ‘cupboard bare’ when it comes to the national stockpile of emergency medical supplies and equipment.”
AXIOS: “Trump leans toward keeping total cut to WHO funding”

And Trump is so focused on blaming others that he’s willing to cede America’s standing as a world leader.

Axios: “President Trump declined an invitation to address a virtual gathering of the World Health Organization.” So who stepped in? China.

3. TRUMP IS MAKING THIS ECONOMIC CRISIS WORSE.

33 million have lost their jobs, 100,000 small businesses have been forced to permanently close, and Trump is leading an incompetent response that still has not even distributed emergency economic aid.

WAPO: “$500 billion Treasury fund meant for coronavirus relief has lent barely any money so far, oversight commission finds”
LA Times: “Eight weeks after Congress voted on the CARES Act just .008% of $500 billion it provided to Treasury for loans has gone out the door.”
WLOS: “Only 2.5% of North Carolina small businesses received federal relief funds, study shows”
NC BUSINESS OWNER >> “We applied for the loan on the first day. We went to our local bank, did all the paperwork. Then it came out, all these other rich businesses got PPP loans.”

NAVIGATOR TRACKING NUMBERS . . .

A quick programming note: After conducting daily Navigator polls since March 23 and doing 40 (!) releases of new data, we are slightly adjusting the polling schedule to gather new data on a weekly basis. We will continue our daily updates and release new data multiple days a week — with the bulk of new findings on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. This shift will also allow us to provide you with deeper analysis of trends, including among key demographics, which will be featured more frequently in the daily updates. Thanks for following … now on to the latest …

Trump is now underwater on economic approval. As Trump has fought to help the wealthy and big corporations, while millions have lost their jobs, disapproval of his handling of the economy is at a record high in our tracking, a net decline of 13 points since March 23.

ECONOMIC CRISIS IN CONTEXT

The latest on how the economic crisis sparked by coronavirus is actually fueled by years of President Trump’s conservative economic policies, focusing today on Trump’s continued foot-dragging on additional support for workers and families.

Trump and his conservative allies in Congress continue to drag their feet on additional support for workers and families while pushing policies that would help Wall Street and massive corporations.

Now that Wall Street has soared back and big businesses have been bailed out, Trump and his allies are perfectly content to sit back and wait while workers and families twist in the wind.
Even the Federal Reserve Chairman predicts that unemployment could reach “Great Depression” levels.
But instead of working with House Democrats on policies that would help workers and families — the true engines of our economy — Trump and his allies are holding legislation hostage to jam through even more support for corporations.
They are so desperate to juice Wall Street and help big business that they are even trying to give corporations legal protection from liability for exposing their workers and customers to danger.
And Trump is still trying to jam through a payroll tax cut, which would give wealthy corporations like Walmart, AT&T, and Exxon Mobil billions of dollars in tax breaks while a single parent earning $25,000 a year would receive just $500.

Congress needs to reject Trump and his allies’ “trickle down” economic policies and move quickly on legislation that puts money in the pockets of workers and families, continues that support until this crisis is over, and fixes the problems in our economy that have made this crisis so much worse than it had to be.

ONE MORE THING…

VISUALIZATION TO SHARE >> More states are on the rise than a week ago. Last week the United States had 7 states in the red zone (left), today we have 17 (right) as states listen to Trump and rush to reopen.