President Donald Trump is itching to get back out on the campaign trail.
“Americans are ready to get back to action and so is President Trump,” said Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale. “The Great American Comeback is real and the rallies will be tremendous. You’ll again see the kind of crowds and enthusiasm that Sleepy Joe Biden can only dream of.”
Trump suspended large-scale campaign rallies in March — as the coronavirus pandemic swept across the United States. As of Tuesday morning, there were more than 1.9 million cases in the United States and more than 111,000 people had died from the virus. And 26 states have either reported an increase or a steady rate of cases of late.
What Trump clearly believes is that these rallies are just what he — and his base — need to rebound from a marked slip in both national and swing state polling over the past few weeks as the country has been consumed by protests following the death of George Floyd while in the custody of the Minneapolis police department.
While Trump insists publicly all is well, it’s obvious to anyone paying attention that he is very worried about his current political standing. Trump huddled with his senior campaign team at the White House last week amid these faltering numbers. He’s taken to Twitter in an attempt to dispute polls from CNN and NBC while also touting unnamed surveys that show him running stronger against former Vice President Joe Biden.
But a look at those same credible media polls make clear that Trump’s growing political problems are not the sort of thing that simply re-starting campaign rallies will fix.
Take the CNN survey released on Monday. It showed Trump trailing Biden 55% to 41% in the horse race and the incumbent President’s approval rating at 38%. Dig into both of those findings and you see that the root of Trump’s poor numbers have very little to do with his base, who are the people most likely to come out to a campaign rally — with the coronavirus still infecting lots and lots of people! — to see him.
