Trump: Teflon President or Not? That Is the Question

Is Donald Trump invincible?

The United States has become the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the failures of the White House have been widely documented.

However, the president’s popularity has far from plummeted.

It is true that his approval ratings have recently declined slightly. But let’s keep in mind that they had initially increased, according to some polls published in February and March.

So, this is more about a return to normal than a severe correction.

With a few months left before the presidential election, it is impossible to detect any signs in the national polls of an inevitable disaster for the Trump presidency.

According to an average of polling data compiled by RealClearPolitics, the president’s approval rating was 45.2% on Tuesday (while 51.5% of Americans said they were dissatisfied with his work). These results are not catastrophic, as they have often been lower since his election.

Will Donald Trump remain a “Teflon” politician forever? Let’s not jump to conclusions right away.

We can only gain a better understanding of public opinion in recent weeks if we try to put these developments in perspective.

Everything seems to indicate that President Trump has benefited from an effect that occurs in times of crisis and is well-known to experts: American citizens “rally behind their flag.” They close ranks behind their president.

The most striking example of this trend is the level of satisfaction that was shown with George W. Bush. It jumped 35 percentage points after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, recalled Matthew A. Baum, professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government

However, according to Baum, it is important to note that Trump’s surge in popularity has been very small compared to that experienced by Bush, and also several other presidents — including Barack Obama:, who added nine percentage points after the death of Osama bin Laden.

Reservations about Trump are all the more evident when we see that the popularity rating of certain American governors has literally jumped. For example, we have seen an increase of 32 percentage points for Andrew Cuomo in New York and 41 percentage points for California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom.

What is clear is that Trump is making a tremendous effort these days to convince Americans that he is the man for the job.

He is increasingly using the White House daily press conferences to extol his merits and denounce his critics, even if the event looks more like a political rally (and often a freak show) than a productive briefing on the current crisis. This was evident on Monday … and, frankly, troubling.

Will this indigestible mixture of propaganda and entertainment be enough to persuade a sufficient number of Americans that the president has acted in an exemplary fashion? Or will it finally expose his quackery?

Here again, the history of the American presidency is rich with lessons. “When support for a president decreases, you will see substantial changes in the space of six months, but it is generally modest from month to month, and virtually undetectable from week to week,” explained Charles Franklin, a political scientist at Marquette University in Wisconsin.*

In other words, it is still too early to predict the lasting impact of the current crisis on public opinion. And even if Trump manages to save face for the moment, it would be premature to say that he will also save his presidency.

*Editor’s note: Although accurately translated, this quoted remark could not be independently verified.