The latest Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll highlights how disruptive the COVID-19 crisis has been to people's daily lives, and how unhappy the populace is becoming with Donald Trump's response to it. Writing at Axios, Drew Altman, president and CEO of KFF, highlights the disconnect the American public is experiencing: 60% say that the federal government should be primarily responsible for the response to the crisis, but 52% say it's their state government that's leading the response.
The poll also shows the incredible partisan divide created by everything Trump touches. While Trump has publicly stated, again and again, that the states are on their own, they are responsible, and that he'll just provide back up (when the governors kiss his ass), 53% of Republicans say that Trump is leading the response. A shocking 89% of Republicans say that they trust Trump to provide reliable information on the coronavirus, essentially the same percentage (90%) as trust the CDC. They're utterly delusional. But they're also dangerous.
If you want to really hate Republicans, look at their actions: "Democrats are still more likely than Republicans to report sheltering in place (90% vs. 74%) and stocking up on food, supplies, or medications (72% vs. 50%)." If you're not stocking up on food and supplies and going out to get them, you're not doing a very good job of sheltering in place. "But at least nine in ten Democrats (95%), independents (91%) and Republicans (91%) now report engaging in some form of social distancing." Is that like how conservative evangelical churches are practicing "social distancing"?
The country is mostly united, however, in prioritizing saving lives over saving the economy, though there's still a pretty major gap between Democrats and Republicans on the value of human life: "A larger share of Democrats (94%), independents (78%), and Republicans (68%) say the U.S. should prioritize slowing the spread of coronavirus than say the U.S. should prioritize getting the economy going again (4%, 16%, and 25%, respectively)."
The bottom linem Altman concludes, is that the "public seems to believe that in a health crisis of this magnitude, with a virus that doesn’t stop at state or international borders and the death toll mounting, a more uniform and aggressive national response is needed."
Trump is failing.