Commentary
Trump's TV Approval Ratings Drop
- by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, April 15, 2020
One is affecting the other. It has to do with his daily press conferences about COVID-19, which run as long as two hours at a time. Most of the time, they feature Trump's ramblings or his attempts at a campaign rally, sans the rally.
FiveThirtyEight.com, in looking at a number of polls, says after a rise in approval ratings to (45.8%) on April 5, up from March 14, 42.3% (a day before announcing the original 15-day stay-at-home stuff) -- his numbers have drifted lower (44.3%) on April 14.
All this comes as daytime viewing data on cable TV news networks shows a slow decline since mid-March.
The quality of the content, mostly from Trump and his growing angry demeanor, includes attacks on the media and others. And it may be having an effect. Others would say it is more basic: The content doesn't offer much truth and facts.
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This includes the good, the bad, and the possible side effects. Consider the questionable treatment of hydroxychloroquine: “What do you have to lose?” Trump asks, in taking the longtime malaria treatment for COVID-19. He didn’t answer that question.
But others did. One chloroquine study has been halted over the risk of fatal heart complications — which would put a crimp a voters' participation in the November elections. In addition, the FAA has barred pilots from taking the drug.
From all this, Trump’s TV brand awareness keeps growing. But it doesn’t tell us if consumers are buying in.
Watching any TV-video content needs an air of credibility, entertainment value, or a combination of both. Concerning news content, you have the obvious. Straight-ahead TV news organizations look to sources — public, private, on-the record and off — who are reputable. Information that can be confirmed.
Some TV news networks have made the iffy decision to let Trump's COVID-19 conferences run in their entirety. Others are pulling away from the live presser periodically to fact-check, since Trump imparts information that is not always accurate.
What to do? TV Watch has said when it comes to Trump or any source of dubious information, there is an easy decision: avoid it, until proven otherwise.
Presidential actions? Sure, that’s a different thing. Entertainment value? Teenage-bullying words, name-calling against politicians and/or reporters at a time when bodies keep piling up, may work for some. But not for Americans who expect leadership and vision in a crisis.
Viewing for the first hour of the COVID-19 briefing is down to 9 million viewers on Fox News Channel, CNN and MSNBC collectively (April 8) from 10.4 million on March 23.
Science, history and biology tell us vaccines and treatments are a long way off -- months (for treatment) if not a year and half (vaccine). So we have more of this to endure.
Wayne Friedman is West Coast Editor of MediaPost. You can reach Wayne at wayne@mediapost.com.
Wayne, one and two point swings in polls of this nature---Trump's approval scores----don't really mean very much as all they are saying in terms of reliability is that he's hovering somewhere in the low to mid-forties. You have to see a longer term swing---in this case downward---to be able to tell if anything is really happening---providing that the percentages follow a consistent pattern. Also, I suspect that on this particular subject, respondents --some of them, at least----may not be giving answers related to the pandemic, specifically, no matter how the questions are framed.
These daily wobbles are mostly within the margin of error and don't mean much. What's stunning is the utter lack of enthusiasm for Trump's performance, beyond the mid-40s base that had already supported him throughout his term in office. George W. Bush soared to 90% approval, two weeks after 9/11. Formerly polarizing governors like Andrew Cuomo have seen double-digit increases. Trump has done nothing to inspire confidence from the majority who have never approved of his performance.
Good Lord. Who cares. I haven't watched a single "COVID-19" press conference, couldn't care less about what Trump is saying, or not saying around this heretofore unseeable, previously unimaginable calamity. Honestly, the level of ongoing finger pointing, and accountability from the left (which holds itself impervious to accountability, ironically enough) on something as random, and unknowable as COVID-19 sickens me, and many other Independents like me.
Really, this is an article about how Trump's favorability ratings haven't changed much in three years, but then, he could snap his finger, make COVID-19 entirely disappear in a nanosecond, and still not rise above 50% with that miracle because of the BLIND HATRED OF THE LEFT.
Remember, his favorability ratings are about where they were when he used Hillary's pantsuit to wipe the floor of the Electoral College in 2016. You remember, Wayne? You, and others like you were adamant about him having ZERO chance of being elected back then. And then, RUDE AWAKENING!
But a rude awakening without a lesson learned. The more hatchet jobs the left attempts on Trump, the more that disgruntled voters will come out for him BECAUSE of the never-ending hatchet jobs being attempted.
It's a zero sum game, this despicability thing. If the left would have only let Trump be, he wouldn't have been elected in 2016. The left just continues to pour it on, however, sucking the majority of the despicable air out of Trump's bubble into their own.
Forget Biden in 2020. Can a Democrat ever be elected President again? Not without a 180 degree turnaround from the nasty, and deceitful left.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/15/coronavirus-us-clinical-trials-of-hydroxychloroquine-hit-warp-speed.html
Wayne, not so fast on dissing hydroxlcloroquine and Dr. Oz....below is from CNBC article above...many studies going on right now..biggest is in NYC...Medical establishment wouldn't fast track and conduct this many studies if they didn't think there was some merit since they are consumed trying to solve a pretty big problem.
Kneejerk “dissing” is what Wayne, and his ilk do Gary. Incessantly. To their own (their own “side’s”) detriment.
In context, Trump’s suggestion that a COVID-19 patient clinging to life on a ventilator “might not have much to lose” is apt. Early administration of hydroxychloroquine to severely ill COVID-19 patients looked promising, with some able to have their ventilators removed. This is why the drug is being tested on the fast track, along with other established drugs that have been proven “safe” for other uses over the years. We’ll see whether they prove effective with COVID-19, but we certainly don’t have the scientific evidence required for that determination to be made yet.
Wayne, and the left, beg to differ. They think they know all the answers already, and they will throw them against the wall to see if they stick in their incessant, hateful efforts to eviscerate Trump. Wayne irresponsibly alludes to a risk of fatal heart complications “attached” to administration of hydroxychloroquine, but fails to mention that “the risk” is singularly attached to “prolonged” administration of the drug. After searching, I could only find a single case… a 60 year old woman that had been taking high doses of hydroxychloroquine for years to treat chronic rheumatoid arthritis, in conjunction with many other drugs to treat that same disease. This woman did suffer from Cardiotoxicity, and died.
Problem is, it is unclear whether there were contraindications between the hydroxychloroquine, and the many other drugs that were being pumped into her body to treat the severe inflammation she’d been suffering for years. What is clear is that those drugs, in her body, rose to toxic levels… basically poisoning her heart to death.
Trump was referring to severely sick COVID-19 patients not having anything to lose by trying their first doses of hydroxychloroquine, to reduce the fluid, and inflammation in their lungs in an effort to save their lives by restoring lung capacity. Trump was referring to the apple that had already shown promise, and Wayne presented his deceitful orange in comparison in his failed attempt to discredit Trump.
We’re not yet sure about hydroxychloroquine’s relative efficacy with COVID-19, but we’ll know more soon. The only thing we can be sure of at this time is that prolonged, high-dosage administration of hydroxychloroquine in conjunction with many other drugs in patients with chronic rheumatoid arthritis should be monitored closely. Despite Wayne’s attempts at obfuscation…
FWIW...
Just read an article in the WSJ titled "A Detroit Area Kidney Doctor Refuses to Abandon His Patients."
The 68 year old doctor (Dr. Olaf Kroneman) has known some of his transplant, and dialysis patients for 30 years. Obviously, because of their battles with a chronic illness, they are at great risk if infected with COVID-19.
Let's face it, at 68, so is Dr. Kroneman. He carries on seeing his patients daily, however, because he hopes his familiar face, even behind a face shield and N95 mask, will be "soothing, and reassuring" and because it would be "against his beliefs to abandon them now."
The article goes on to chronicle how one of his female patients, a woman he'd been treating for fifteen years, had recently been admitted with COVID-19.
Dr. Kroneman immediately administered hydroxychloroquine. He knew it wasn't "a cure" but also realized that "not trying was not an option."
When the woman was discharged from Dr. Kroneman's hospital, her "Detroit homicide detective husband" told Dr. Kroneman that "he loved him."
Be careful, Wayne. Deceitful obfuscation attempts, and hatchet jobs designed to make our President appear foolish (when he's actually being practical) will make more people "love" Trump, while casting jaundiced eyes at you.
Ken, you can write the phone book if you'd like, but it doesn't change the depressing facts that over 30,000 Americans have died, in ONE MONTH, after your president said all this would go away like magic. His own task force wants numbers to go down for two solid weeks before anything gets opened, but the death toll and the virus count is going up in every state. And your president is tweeting "liberate Michigan" to support the crazy protesters who are breaking all the guidelines as they spread the virus among themselves. We are by far the worst nation in the world in our response to this crisis, and your president keeps digging deeper with his embarrassing "briefings", self-serving pronouncements, and childish tweets. This gives me no pleasure, and certainly no surprise, but after a week-long favorable trend, Trump is now polling negative on his coronavirus performance, and those Gallup pollsters that looked so good to you a few weeks ago now have Trump's job approval 11 points underwater. This one does give me pleasure: the RealClearPolitics rolling average now gives Biden a 5.5% lead. We will say goodbye to the worst president in American history in 9 long months.
Interesting, and somewhat humorous Mark. Your declaration that Trump is "my President."
I didn't vote for the guy.
I do agree with many assessments of the man's immaturity, and self-serving nature. But then, some of our best presidents, including JFK and Clinton, have shared similar character flaws. They were just better at hiding them, including their misogyny, and deceitful natures. They were both career politicians, and had more skin in "projecting a different image to the public." Not Trump. He doesn't give a rat's ass about how he's perceived, so he let's fly as if he doesn't need the gig. And he doesn't. The dude is set for life, along with his family, and that was true before he stepped into the Oval Office.
Now, on him stepping into the Oval Office. Trump is more the left's President. The left should somehow come to understand this paradoxical truth, but I'm not going to hold my COVID-19 shortened breath.
Me, as an Independent over the years, I've voted for Democrats (including Clinton, and Obama) and I've voted Libertarian (my natural leaning) in three different Presidential elections. Only voted for one Republican in my lifetime... Reagan in '84. Your post loses credibility when it declares that Trump is "my President" when it is the left that has basically propped him up all along the way. Every sling and arrow fired at the guy by the left has bounced off him, fired up his base, and stirred up sympathy/empathy among moderates, and Independents that find the left's endless, and often baseless evisceration efforts to be more despicable than the orange haired one himself (making them more likely to vote for him).
If you don't think that fatigue from eight years of laggard recovery under Obama/Biden starting in 2008 (after our last recession) wasn't intrumental in the rolling out of the red carpet for the coronation of the insolent, orange haired one then you are mistaken. If you don't agree that making shit up about what he's saying, and doing, and endlessly putting it out there (the forte of the left, it seems, as deeper dives into their actual intentions for the country, and its citizens are never a good, vote garnering strategy) actually helps Trump's cause, then you're sadly mistaken.
Mark writes...
... and those Gallup pollsters that looked so good to you a few weeks ago now have Trump's job approval 11 points underwater. This one does give me pleasure: the RealClearPolitics rolling average now gives Biden a 5.5% lead.
Presumptuous, and wrong. I don't look at polls, Mark, so saying they "look good to me" is just ignorant. You see how ignorant the left made itself look by looking at the polls in 2016?" The polls that made a Hillary victory a fait accompli? That determined that a Trump win was an impossibility? The left still hasn't recovered from that grave error borne of biased, and often incorrect polls (the reasons I don't pay attention to them).
In the immortal words of the last Republican candidate I ever voted for...
"There you go again."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_you_go_again
By the way, Mark, I agree with the beginning of your first paragraph...
Ken, you can write the phone book if you'd like, but it doesn't change the depressing facts that over 30,000 Americans have died...
It's actually between 32,000 and 37,000 Americans (depending on "poll" chosen) that have died since Covid-19 first presented here back in December, and that is depressing. Not as depressing as the 80,000 Americans that died in a similar four month period two years ago from influenza, but definitely almost half as depressing.
Your proclivity to tie that "depressing" number of deaths to something Trump said, or did not say (a widespread proclivity of the left which continues to produce antithetical, and paradoxical results) is the issue here. I suppose that doing so makes you somehow feel better about yourself, but it actually dimishes you in the eyes of others. And that's why I believe that every attempt to undermine Trump has backfired, and will continue to backfire... unfortunately helping to propel him to another victory.
Teenage bullying? My dear Wayne, you give the man way too much credit. I would put it at 8 year-old, 3rd grade elementary playground bullying - and that's if the 8 year-old is a genius.