Power Up: Independents and even Republicans losing confidence in Trump amid pandemic, new poll shows

Trump’s approval rating and and credibility have significantly deteriorated, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll out this morning: 60 percent of Americans disapprove of his pandemic management and over 60 percent of respondents say they do not trust what he says about the outbreak. 

• “The Post-ABC poll shows 38 percent of Americans approve of his handling of the outbreak, down from 46 percent in May and 51 percent in March. Sixty percent disapprove, up from 53 percent in May and 45 percent in March,” according to our colleagues Scott Clement and Dan Balz. 

All about that base: Trump’s coronavirus response has been marred by false and misleading statements, infighting with his administration’s own scientists, and lack of a plan. This week alone, the U.S. broke its record for cases in a single day, with over 70,000 new cases announced on Thursday — despite the president’s continued insistence the virus is “going away.” 

His trust deficit extends beyond the partisan cleavage. 

• Overall, 51 percent of registered voters think former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is more “honest and trustworthy” than Trump, according to the poll. 
• Two in three political independents and nearly three in 10 Republicans say they don’t trust Trump’s word on the pandemic, according to Scott and Dan.
• “Political independents continue to give Trump negative marks for his handling of the outbreak by a wide margin, with 39 percent approving and 58 percent disapproving in the latest survey,” per Scott and Dan. “A scant 4 percent of Democrats approve of Trump’s efforts. Among Republicans, nearly 4 in 5 approve, but a notable 19 percent disapprove.”

Amid his dip in public polls, Trump replaced his campaign manager this week — though it’s unlikely that a staff shuffle can swing public opinion without significant changes from the president himself. 

• “…numerous Republicans and Trump allies said Thursday that the personnel overhaul — demoting Brad Parscale and replacing him with Bill Stepien as campaign manager — does little to address the main problem facing the struggling Trump campaign: the president himself and his chronically self-destructive behavior,” our colleagues Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Bob Costa report. 

Trump’s negative marks reflect a continued decline in support among some of his most loyal constituencies key to his 2016 win. Thirty-four percent of white non-college educated men and 52 percent of white non-college education women disapproved of Trump’s performance as president. Sixty-five percent of independent women and 49 percent of independent men disapproved of him as well. 

• Key constituency: “Trump’s ratings for handling the coronavirus have dropped by 16 percentage points among white evangelical Protestants to 68 percent today; by 15 points among white men without college degrees to 56 percent; and by 11 points among rural residents to 48 percent approval,” per Scott and Dan.

Bad news all around; Quinnipiac University’s poll released yesterday showed Biden with a 15-point lead over Trump and growing disapproval of Trump’s job performance. After White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows snapped at Fox News host Martha MacCallum for  asking why 59 percent of registered voters believe Biden would do a better job handling the outbreak, MacCallum simply replied that she was “just telling you what the numbers are.” 

Trump’s on the wrong side of masks, too. 

• “ … nearly 8 in 10 Americans say they are wearing one most or all of the time when they come close to others in public. Trump wore a mask for the first time in public last week after months in which he showed reluctance to follow the recommendations of public health officials. Even after that display at a military hospital, however, he publicly contended the use of masks should not be mandatory,” according to Scott and Dan.
• Seventy-four percent of Democrats responded that they wear a mask “all the time without exception, while 42 percent of Republicans and 52 percent of Independents responded the same, according to the poll. 

As the virus has spread exponentially in Republican states in the South and the West, the partisan fear gap has also narrowed, according to Scott and Dan: “The share of Republicans who are at least somewhat worried has risen from 44 percent to 54 percent, while worry among Democrats has held steady at 79 percent in May and 81 percent today. Independents are closer to Republicans, with 60 percent saying they worry about themselves or a family member being infected.” 

• Case in point: “The peril was reflected in another grim set of data out of Florida on Thursday, with the state reporting a record number of deaths — 156 — and adding nearly 14,000 new cases, its ­second-highest total to date. Across the state, nearly 9,000 people remain hospitalized for treatment of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus,” our colleagues Griff Witte and Rachel Weiner report. 

Politically popular?: Americans are still more cautious than Trump about reopening. The sentiment is at odds with a president who has pushed for a quick restart to the economy, even as some states have experienced a sharp climb in new cases while doing so. Building on what we’ve seen in previous polling, a majority of Americans — 63 percent — believe it’s more important to stop the spread even if closures continue to hurt the economy. 

• That’s up from 57 percent in May and “the share who ‘strongly’ favor controlling the virus’s spread over restarting the economy has grown from 41 percent in May to 52 percent in the latest survey,” per Dan and Scott.

15 WOMEN ACCUSE REDSKINS EMPLOYEES OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT: “The allegations raised by [former Redskins employee Emily] Applegate and others — running from 2006 to 2019 — span most of [owner Daniel] Snyder’s tenure as owner and fall into two categories: unwelcome overtures or comments of a sexual nature, and exhortations to wear revealing clothing and flirt with clients to close sales deals,” Will Hobson and Liz Clarke report.

• The team’s training camp and the NFL scouting combine were particularly bad: “I was propositioned basically every day at training camp,” said one female employee who worked for the team  for several years in the mid-2010s.
• Alex Santos, the club’s director of pro personnel, was fired last week: He “was accused by six former employees and two reporters who covered the team of making inappropriate remarks about their bodies and asking them whether they were romantically interested in him.”
• A haunting detail: Redskins Park has a staircase lined at the top with transparent plexiglass, which goes down to the locker room and training area. Someone standing at the bottom can look up into the skirt of a woman standing at the top. Former female employees said veteran female employees told them to avoid this area. “One former female member of the executive staff learned this lesson early in her tenure, she said, when she looked down to see a male trainer, two floors down, staring right back up, walking step for step with her,” our colleagues write. “He even leaned to get a better angle,” the woman told them. “He wasn’t even trying to hide it.”

A jaw-dropping quote: “I have never been in a more hostile, manipulative, passive-aggressive environment … and I worked in politics,” Julia Payne, former assistant press secretary in the Clinton administration who briefly served as vice president of communications for the team in 2003, told our colleagues.

Snyder was not accused of harassment: “Among the men accused of harassment and verbal abuse are three former members of Snyder’s inner circle and two longtime members of the personnel department,” our colleagues write. He declined repeated requests to talk to our colleagues.

• The longtime owner belittled executives, they say helping foster a hostile environment: “Snyder routinely belittled top executives … perhaps most intensely [Dennis] Greene, the former sales executive, whom Snyder mocked for having been a cheerleader in college. After one executive staff meeting … Greene said Snyder had ordered him to do cartwheels for their entertainment.”

Multiple employees abruptly left before The Post published its story: They “include Larry Michael, the club’s longtime radio voice, and Alex Santos, the team’s director of pro personnel,” our colleagues write. “In a statement, the team said it had hired D.C. attorney Beth Wilkinson and her firm, Wilkinson Walsh, ‘to conduct a thorough independent review of this entire matter and help the team set new employee standards for the future.’”

The story before the story: “Everyone seemed to know that there was a Washington Post story about the team — and everyone seemed to have thoughts about it. Except that until late Thursday afternoon, no such story had been published, and no one — outside of a few people in The Post’s newsroom — knew what it would say or when,” Paul Farhi reports in his recap of the rumor mill.

• In the end, the piece is a testament to dogged reporting: “The other 14 women spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing a fear of litigation because some signed nondisclosure agreements with the team that threaten legal retribution if they speak negatively about the club,” Will and Liz write. “The team declined a request from The Post to release former female employees from these agreements so they could speak on the record without fear of legal reprisal. This story involved interviews with more than 40 current and former employees and a review of text messages and internal company documents.”

MARY TRUMP SAYS SHE’S HEARD HER UNCLE SAY THE N-WORD: “In an interview with The Post, Mary Trump said she blames ‘almost 100 percent’ her grandfather, Fred Trump — the family patriarch whom she describes as a ‘sociopath’ in her 214-page memoir of sorts — for creating the conditions that led to Donald Trump’s rise and, ultimately, what she views as his dangerous presidency,” Ashley Parker reports.

She told our colleague it was commonplace to hear racial and anti-Semitic slurs around the family: MSNBC host Rachel Maddow pressed Mary Trump on whether she had specifically heard her uncle, now the president, utter those slurs, Colby Itkowitz reports. “Oh yeah, of course I did,” Mary Trump told Maddow. “And I don’t think that should surprise anybody given how virulently racist he is today.”

• The White House denied those allegations: “This is a book of falsehoods, plain and simple,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews said in an emailed statement to our colleague. “The President doesn’t use those words.”

More from her Post interview: Mary Trump told our colleague that Fred Trump, the president’s late father, was the chief enabler. 

• “But now in the White House, Mary Trump said, the blame starts with President Trump’s daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — both senior advisers — but expands more broadly to include his ‘chiefs of staff who went along thinking that they could have some kind of influence, only to find that they didn’t.’ Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is ‘perfectly willing to put up with all sorts of egregious behavior to get his own agenda through,’ she said.”

The book is a record-smashing bestseller: It sold 950,000 copies on its first day, CNN’s Oliver Darcy reports. Simon & Schuster was just weeks ago celebrating another not-so-pretty Trump tell-all from former national security adviser John Bolton’s book, which sold more than 780,000 copies in its first week.

INTERNAL DOC SAYS STATES NEED STRONGER MEASURES: “A document prepared for the White House coronavirus task force but not publicized suggests more than a dozen states should revert to more stringent protective measures, limiting social gatherings to 10 people or fewer, closing bars and gyms and asking residents to wear masks at all times,” the Center for Public Integrity’s Liz Essley Whyte reports.

• More details: “The document, dated July 14 and obtained by [CPI], says 18 states are in the ‘red zone’ for covid-19 cases, meaning they had more than 100 new cases per 100,000 population last week,” the center reports. “Eleven states are in the ‘red zone’ for test positivity, meaning more than 10 percent of diagnostic test results came back positive.”
• The states in question: The 18 states in the red zone are Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. And the 11 states in the red zone for test positivity are Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas and Washington.

KEMP SUES ATLANTA OVER MASK MANDATE: “Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) sued to stop Atlanta from enforcing some of its coronavirus-related rules, including its mandate to wear a face covering in public, even as the state experiences a sharp rise in coronavirus cases,” Meagan Flynn and Marisa Iati report.

• Kemp alleges that Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) lacked authority to issue those mandates: Bottoms fired back.

RUSSIANS ACCUSED OF TRYING TO STEAL VACCINE RESEARCH: “Hackers linked to a Russian intelligence service are trying to steal information from researchers working to produce coronavirus vaccines in the United States, Britain and Canada, security officials in those countries said,” Ellen Nakashima, William Booth and Amanda Coletta report.

• Yes, the Russians are allegedly at it again: “The hackers, who belong to a unit known variously as APT29, ‘the Dukes’ or ‘Cozy Bear,’ are targeting vaccine research and development organizations in the three countries, the officials said in a joint statement. The unit is one of the two Russian spy groups that penetrated the Democratic Party’s computers in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.” 

LOCAL UPDATE: The D.C. health department will now announce on July 31 whether schools in the nation’s capital will be allowed to reopen or if they will be entirely virtual, Perry Stein reports. “The swift change of direction came as large districts across the region, and the country, scrap plans to bring students back to class amid national coronavirus infection rates that range from stubborn to surging.”

Nationals may have to relocate some games outside of the District: The defending champs “are unsure whether they will begin this season playing at Nationals Park because of municipal coronavirus protocols … and the team is actively exploring alternative sites — with Opening Day only a week away,” Jesse Dougherty and Dave Sheinin report.

• Virginia is for … baseball?: The team has considered “two alternate sites … including their class A stadium in Fredericksburg, Va., and, to a much lesser extent, their spring training facility in West Palm Beach, Fla.”