It looks like the media’s efforts to denigrate President Donald Trump’s management of the economy are bouncing off his economic support numbers. Sorry, CNN.
Liberal outlet Reuters released a report headlined “Biden losing economic argument to Trump as U.S. begins to re-open.” Then came the eye-opening admission: “U.S. President Donald Trump is trusted more than Democratic nominee Joe Biden to handle the economy, polls show.” In fact, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found “Trump with a 42% to 34% lead over Biden in terms of which candidate was trusted more on the economy.” That's an eight percent advantage.
On May 20, CNN released a predictive report headlined: “Trump will lose in a landslide because of the economy, new election model predicts.” It appears that prediction didn’t hold weight for too long.
In the lede paragraph, CNN tried to put the whammy on Trump using the economy as a foundation for his reelection strategy. CNN lead writer Matt Egan wrote, “The economy has gone from President Donald Trump's greatest political asset to perhaps his biggest weakness.”
Egan continued: “The coronavirus recession will cause Trump to suffer a ‘historic defeat’ in November, a national election model released Wednesday by Oxford Economics predicted.”
The Reuters/Ipsos poll nukes that theory.
Reuters provided context:
Some Biden supporters fear that [his economic] vulnerability could intensify if Trump becomes the face of an economic recovery as the country re-opens after shutdowns, giving the Republican president’s re-election prospects a boost when he needs it most.
Reuters summarized the comments of Ian Sams, an adviser for the polling organization Navigator and a former spokesman for Sen. Kamala Harris’s (D-CA) 2020 campaign:
An improving economy could play to Trump’s strengths, said Ian Sams, an adviser at Navigator, a polling organization.
The president’s economic support numbers come as “over 40 million Americans have filed for unemployment” in the last ten weeks, according to CBS News.
Market behavior, however, seems to show a more optimistic perspective on the grim jobs data. MarketsInsider reported May 28 that the “Wall Street firm that nailed the market bottom now expects the S&P 500 to jump 8% by the end of August.”
The Wall Street Journal reported May 27 on Tuesday’s market data. Specifically, The Journal said that stocks surged “on optimism about economies reopening and the potential development of a coronavirus vaccine, extending a rally that has pushed major U.S. indexes up more than 30% since late March.” [Emphasis added.]
That’s in the face of an economic crisis due to states ordering businesses to shut down and ordering consumers to stay at home.
The future of the economy remains to be seen as states look to reopen their economies, but for now, it doesn’t look like Trump’s “biggest weakness” going into November, despite CNN’s predictions.
