Trump's other coronavirus complication: His credibility gap

[brooklynite]

Politico

The president who once dictated his own doctor’s note is now asking a worried nation to trust his doctors’ notes.

President Donald Trump's bout with coronavirus amounts to the most serious medical crisis facing a president since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981 — and now Trump’s long history of dubious claims about his own health has suddenly gone from water-cooler chatter in Washington to a key issue hanging over his ability to govern and win re-election.

A Morning Consult/POLITICO flash poll conducted on Friday found 68 percent of respondents said the president should address the public directly about his positive Covid-19 diagnosis. But given his track record, a president who's rarely at a loss for words is short of one crucial quality in a moment of national anxiety: Credibility.

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released last month found that just 40 percent of Americans trust Trump to provide "reliable information on coronavirus," and only 36 percent of respondents this summer deemed the president "honest and trustworthy" — which was actually an improvement from last year's mark of 34 percent, according to Gallup's long-running poll.

[pwb]

1. This could be the October Con?

The whole thing.

[frazzled]

2. The chief COVID physician at Walter Reed should be giving the information

Not Donald Trump, and not his personal patsy physician. I really don't want to hear from either of these people.

I know that if and when he survives this, Trump is going to say it was "nothing," and that he was "hard at work" (when has he ever been?) the whole time. No one, besides his subset of adoring minions, will believe it.