Trump is winning the corona spin game:
Trump's grossly incompetent leadership was on full display, every day, during White House briefings about the virus, which he essentially turned into daily campaign rallies. He attacked reporters, in his usual bullying style, for asking questions about his slow response to the pandemic. As criticism of the administration's response grew and the death toll rose, Trump and his team did what they do best: changed the conversation.
This is how Trump has survived these battles. He turns legal battles into political ones and positions them in the court of media and public opinion, which is where he has transformed the art of political spin. His propaganda has normalised (or, rather, elevated) blatant lying, under the banner of "alternative facts". Through Fox and Friends, and Trump pals like Sean Hannity, right-wing conspiracy theories have become commonplace in the media and American political discourse. After all, Fox News is still the most-watched cable news channel in America and has been for the past 18 years.
Just when you think Trump is confronting a crisis that he cannot escape, the White House creates a scandal for the media to focus their attention on. They overwhelm us with a story (often with an accompanying buzzword) that creates a host of accusations and legal questions that confuse and overwhelm the public as we scramble to try to understand the basic elements of the controversy.
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Somehow, Trump's approval ratings are holding relatively steady. They even got a bump. As of May 13, according to a Gallup poll, his job approval rating reached 49 percent, a tie for the highest of his presidency. This is low, but not that much lower than previous presidents. Obama began his second term in 2012 with a job approval rating of 46 percent. Furthermore, even amid the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, a recent CNN poll shows that respondents gave Trump a strong advantage over Biden in terms of his handling of the economy.
Trump's strategy of blaming the Chinese for the coronavirus also seems to be working with the American public. A recent survey by Navigator Research showed that 43 percent of Americans think "China bears more responsibility than the federal government for the way coronavirus has spread in the US".
Polling data about the 2020 election varies. FiveThirtyEight gives Biden around a six-point lead nationally, and crucial but narrow leads in the key battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin and North Carolina. However, a recent CNN poll conducted by SSRS echoes Biden's national lead but shows an advantage for Trump in the swing states. This would allow him to win the Electoral College and likely lose the popular vote, which is exactly what happened in 2016.
Note that Biden came out with an ad claiming that Trump was not tough enough on China, thus reinforcing Trump's framing it as the Chinese virus and letting Trump off the hook for his government's failures.