Trump shows frayed nerves with virus toll climbing

Bloomberg

As the coronavirus inflicts ever more death and economic carnage across the US, President Donald Trump is resorting to his preferred and battle-tested tactic to fight the biggest threat to his re-election: diversion.
The shift was clear on Mother’s Day, when he flooded Twitter with 126 posts, including promoting a tweet that called his own Justice Department “corrupt.” A day later, he accused Democrats of trying to “steal” a little-watched congressional race in California.
He continued his attacks into the week, accusing Barack Obama of unnamed crimes, and then promoting a baseless conspiracy theory that MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough had committed murder.
The totality of Trump’s display underscored the extent to which the pandemic has worn on the president, who has watched his popularity in key swing states plummet. Just two months ago Trump was reveling in a booming economy and a field of Democratic challengers that appeared in disarray. Now, he faces harsher realities: More than 81,000 dead people and an economy in the deepest contraction in memory.
The virus has meanwhile crept into the White House itself, infecting staffers in the Vice President Mike Pence’s office and one of the president’s own valets.
Recent polls show that public opinion of Trump is souring as former Vice President Joe Biden pulls ahead in crucial swing states, despite a shoestring campaign and self-confinement to his Delaware home.
Just 43% of Americans approve of Trump’s coronavirus performance according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll. That’s despite 71% of those surveyed approving of the job their state governors were doing.
Coronavirus isn’t the first existential crisis of Trump’s political career. And in each instance, he’s survived and even thrived through defiant and controversial behaviour echoed and amplified in his outburst earlier.
Facing an investigation into possible ties between his campaign and Russia, Trump in 2017 accused Obama — without evidence — of tapping the phones at Trump Tower. And amid heavy criticism over his administration’s handling of the post-hurricane humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico, Trump said on Twitter that any National Football League player protesting the National Anthem was “a son of a bitch.”
But the pace and intensity of Trump’s display this week offered a barometer of the sense of urgency to rescue his own political fate.