A new poll published this week demonstrates that Americans are increasingly pessimistic about how the U.S. has generally responded to the coronavirus pandemic, with a majority believing “the worst is yet to come” for the first time since the start of May.
A CNN/SSRS poll published on Wednesday and conducted from August 12 to 15 finds that only 40 percent of Americans believe the worst of COVID-19 is behind us, while 55 percent say things are going to be worse in the future.
Americans aren’t simply dissatisfied with how President Donald Trump has handled the pandemic (with 58 percent saying they disapprove of how he’s led on the issue), but they’re also ashamed by how things have progressed. Just 28 percent of Americans consider themselves “proud” of the United States’s response to coronavirus, while 68 percent say they’re “embarrassed” over how the country has tried (and largely failed) to prevent the spread of the disease.
Trump’s approval rating on coronavirus is the worst it’s been since CNN/SSRS started asking Americans to grade him on his response to handling the disease. The poll also found that 62 percent of respondents felt he could be doing more to fight the pandemic in the U.S.
Though most Americans say they are embarrassed by the U.S.’s response to coronavirus so far, Trump himself appears to have no such misgivings and has continued to make embarrassing statements about his performance in trying to combat the pandemic. On Monday, for example, Trump tried to downplay the crisis in the U.S. by suggesting that New Zealand, which has been heralded across the globe as an example of how to correctly respond to COVID-19, was facing new difficulties in dealing with it.
That country, Trump said during a campaign event in Minnesota, was now seeing a “big surge” in new cases. “It’s terrible. We don’t want that,” Trump added.
Trump’s comment apparently referred to a report that New Zealand had discovered nine new cases of coronavirus after having eradicated the virus earlier this year. For comparison, on the very day Trump was drawing attention to the “big surge” in New Zealand, the U.S. diagnosed more than 40,000 new cases of COVID-19, and reported 542 new deaths.
On Tuesday, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern responded to Trump’s comments from Monday, pointing out that the number of new cases the president was alluding to as a “big surge” was incomparable to what was happening in the U.S.
“Anyone who is following will quite easily see that New Zealand’s nine cases in a day does not compare to the United States’ tens of thousands,” she said, adding that Trump was “patently wrong” to make such a suggestion.
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.
Last week, 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