Source: youtube.com
Then the reality simply became too real to ignore, and the administration reacted in part by opening up to some of the proposals of those the President had accused of engineering the alleged hoax—so much so that some progressives began to worry that they were getting outflanked from the left by Trump in an election year. A recently-signed $2-trillion stimulus bill includes a direct, one-time payment to Americans that was called for Democrats and Republicans alike—$1,200 to most people with an annual income of $75,000 or less, plus $500 in certain cases to cover children, which represents perhaps the most notable change from the usual Republican inclination to label such moves as “socialist”. The intervention package also aims to provide businesses small and large with loans to help muffle the economic impact of the outbreak, representing a more direct, big-government approach than Republicans’ traditionally-favored method of tax breaks. For his part, the President has since called on the nation to practice social distancing and, in general, acknowledged the severity of the situation to a much greater degree (albeit only after one of his favorite Fox News pundits urged him to do so).
In the very short term, it even appears to be paying off for Trump politically. As always, the public is strongly divided along partisan lines in how it views his performance, but overall the situation appears to have resulted in a mild version of the “rally ‘round the flag” effect, whereby people unite around their leader to a greater degree during a crisis. A Monmouth poll found that 50 percent of adults believe the President is doing a good job with regard to the virus (versus 45 who say the opposite), while CBS/YouGov’s split was 53 to 47. Meanwhile, according to Gallup, his overall approval rating has seen a notable improvement, from 44 to 49 percent, a trend echoed by a Hill-HarrisX poll, which recorded the highest approval rating for Trump since August 2018: 50 percent. Of course, November is still far away, and as we have seen, popularity in dire times can be a fleeting thing. The lesson here is that communication can only be a substitute for appropriate action for so long, and it is easy to imagine the above story playing out over a much longer period, with regard to an even greater, but similarly downplayed threat, such as climate change.