Almost 2 in 3 Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of pandemic: poll

Almost 2 in 3 Americans disapprove of President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a poll released Sunday.

An ABC News-Ipsos poll determined that 65 percent of respondents said they disapprove of the president’s management of the COVID-19 crisis almost eight months after the first coronavirus case was confirmed in Washington state. 

Thirty-five percent of poll participants said they backed the president’s response to the pandemic. Sunday’s poll was the fourth since early July in which Trump’s approval rating for his management of the pandemic stayed in the low- to mid-30s range.

{mosads}Approval for Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis is expectedly split among partisan lines, with 80 percent of Republicans, 31 percent of independents and 5 percent of Democrats standing behind the president.  

A majority of Americans also do not trust what Trump says about the virus and believe the president’s response to the virus was too slow. 

A total of 68 percent of respondents said they do not trust what the president says about the pandemic. Almost three-quarters of Republicans — 74 percent — said they trust what Trump says on COVID-19. 

Respondents were more split on whether they trusted Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s rhetoric on the coronavirus, with 51 percent trusting him “a great deal” or a “good amount” and 49 percent trusting him “not so much” or “not at all.”

Most participants — 67 percent — said Trump acted too slowly in response to the pandemic, while less than 31 percent said he acted at the right pace, and 1 percent said he reacted too quickly.

More than a quarter of Republicans — 28 percent — said they thought the president acted too slowly on the pandemic, while more than two-thirds of Republicans — 69 percent — said he reacted at the right pace. 

The ABC News-Ipsos poll was conducted between Sept. 11 and Sept. 12. It surveyed 533 adults from a national sample. The margin of error amounted to 4.7 percentage points. 

Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller reacted to the poll on ABC’s “This Week” by defending the president and the enthusiasm expressed for his campaign. 

“Americans very much trust President Trump to help us recover with the economy, and Americans also believe that President Trump is the one who is best positioned to lead us to a vaccine,” he said. 

Pressed on new ABC News/Ipsos poll which finds most Americans are skeptical of Trump’s performance on COVID-19, Jason Miller defends Trump, telling @GStephanopoulos, “There is a reason why Bernie Sanders and other Democrats are so concerned” about Biden. https://t.co/0DxaxGFKtC pic.twitter.com/CWvkLegwGY

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) September 13, 2020

The poll comes after interviews between Bob Woodward and Trump were released last week in which the president said he downplayed the threat of the coronavirus pandemic in public to avoid a panic, despite being aware it was “more deadly” than the flu. 

Woodward’s book “Rage” is set to be released this week.

Johns Hopkins University data indicates that more than 6.4 million COVID-19 cases and 193,705 deaths have been confirmed in the U.S.