During an interview with a local television station in North Carolina on Monday evening, President Donald Trump suggested he was one of the most successful chief executives this country has ever seen.
“Nobody’s accomplished more in the first three-and-a-half years than I have,” Trump told a reporter from NBC station affiliate WRAL, without providing details about which accomplishments he had in mind.
“I’m not sure I could have done any more, because we’ve really done a lot,” the president added. “We’ve done, I think, more than any administration has ever done in the first three-and-a-half years, and nobody even challenges that.”
Trump was also asked whether he would have done anything differently if he could relive the past four or five months of the coronavirus. But he largely avoided answering the question, responding instead about his closing off travel from China as evidence of his doing well.
However, most Americans give Trump negative marks when it comes to his response to COVID-19, with 68 percent in a recent Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll stating they disapprove of how he’s handled the crisis compared to 32 percent who say they approve.
In a broader sense, that same poll found that most Americans were upset with his time as president in general. Just 38 percent said he was doing a good job, while 61 percent gave him negative marks.
Trump also touted how well he’s handled the economy, blaming recent downturns in the market on the coronavirus pandemic, which he called a “plague from China” during the interview, despite advice from medical experts not to describe COVID-19 in such terms.
But even on that metric, Americans are starting to sour on Trump. For most of his time in office, the president has been given credit from voters for what appears to most to be good economic outcomes (even though, as many have pointed out, positive economic indicators began long before he took office). But when it comes to the economy, the U.S. population is now split, with 51 percent saying they disapprove of how Trump has performed on the issue, and 48 percent saying they approve.
It’s not unusual for Trump to tout himself, even while doing poorly in the eyes of the American public. In mid-March, after he finally relented and decided to take action on the coronavirus pandemic (following weeks of inaction when he kept ridiculing it as a “hoax” used against him politically), the president was asked by reporters in the White House to rate his response to the crisis on a scale of 1 to 10.
“I’d rate it a 10, I think we’ve done a great job,” Trump said.
As of Tuesday afternoon, there have been more than 4.4 million cumulative cases of COVID-19 reported in the United States, with nearly 151,000 having died as a result of the disease.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy