Editorial board of major Texas newspaper warns Trump is losing support due to pandemic

The Houston Chronicle’s editorial board warned that President Trump is losing support in the Lone Star State due to his response to the coronavirus pandemic. 

The board targeted Trump’s response to the pandemic in an editorial published Wednesday, the same day Trump visited Midland, and said the outbreak in Texas has “only gotten worse” since the president visited the state in June. 

“No one is as resilient as Texans when it comes to dealing with disasters and coping with a booming economy that suddenly goes bust but we have suffered from unwise and inconsistent leadership. Instead, we got cheerleading on reopening businesses, slow testing results and a feckless contact-tracing program,” the board wrote. 

“It was a dismal failure. How do we know?” the editorial continued. “When you visited Dallas back on June 11, Texas was leading the stampede to reopen for business, spurred on by Gov. Greg Abbott’s aggressive plans and your administration’s false assurances that the outbreaks were ‘under control.’”

The editorial board noted that at the time of Trump’s last visit, the U.S. had a little more than 2 million coronavirus cases and 114,000 deaths, while Texas reported about 85,000 cases and 2,000 deaths. The numbers have vastly increased since, with the U.S. reporting more than 4 million cases and 150,000 deaths. The nation’s COVID-19 related fatalities are nearly the population of Midland, the editorial board noted. 

Texas reported more than 400,000 coronavirus cases and 6,190 fatalities as of Tuesday. 

“You can’t take Texas for granted this time,” the board wrote. “We know you don’t put much stock in independent polls, Mr. President, but a consensus is growing that Texans are losing confidence that you are the person to lead the nation out of the canyon that you and your administration have helped dig.”

The editorial cites a Morning Consult poll released Monday that showed presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leading Trump 47 percent to 45 percent in Texas. Other recent polls have also shown Trump and Biden neck and neck in the state that Trump carried by just 9 points in 2016.