March 23, 2020

By Emily Singer

American Independent Foundation

Donald Trump’s approval rating for his coronavirus response continues to fall, with just 39% of Americans approving of his handling of the deadly virus, according to a new ABC News poll released Friday morning.

Trump’s 39% approval rating on his virus response marks a new low in ABC’s survey, which began asking questions about Americans’ support for Trump’s coronavirus response in mid-March.

Back in mid-March, when states were beginning to institute stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of the coronavirus, 55% of Americans approved of Trump’s handling of the virus.

But since then, Americans’ approval of Trump’s virus response has steadily fallen, with a whopping 60% now disapproving of the job he’s doing.

The poll comes as the coronavirus death toll nears 100,000. To date, 98,000 people have died from the virus, all in a few weeks, and a second wave is expected in the forced “reopening."

Trump is urging states to reopen their economies, even as cases of the virus continue to rise.

And he’s refusing to follow his administration’s own guidance for virus prevention measures, such as wearing a mask in public spaces where it’s not possible to maintain a safe social distance.

“I want to get our country back to normal. I want to normalize,” Trump said on Thursday.

Trump, meanwhile, has said he would have done “nothing” differently in how he’s handled the virus, even as a study from Columbia University found that 54,000 deaths could have been prevented had Trump called on states to issue stay-at-home orders just two weeks earlier than he did.

Trump on Thursday brushed off the report, accusing Columbia University of being anti-Trump.

“Columbia is an institution that’s very liberal. It’s a — I think it’s a just a political hit job, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said of the study.

Reprinted under Creative Commons license