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The crisis of leadership in America

Do you agree with the majority?

Are Trump’s days in the White House numbered?

“He doesn’t behave the way a president ought to act.” A view not voiced by Donald Trump’s democratic opponents, but according to a recent New York Times/Sienna College poll, by seventy-five per cent of those who voted for Trump in 2016 across America’s battleground states.

Those states will be crucial come the November presidential election. Donald Trump is a president under siege. His perceived racism and open hostility towards people protesting at the killing of George Floyd and other incidents of police brutality have united millions of Americans in their opposition.

Sending in federal security forces to Democratic-run cities to combat what he termed, ‘spiralling violent crime from the radical left wing,’ heightened tensions, but the self-termed ‘president of law and order,’ continued to serve up dire warnings that violence would only increase should democratic rival, Joe Biden, become president. 

Any news that isn’t good for him can only be fake news. 

Trump’s feuding with much of the Press and media and his conviction that any news that isn’t good for him can only be fake news has left independent observers baffled. His boasting that he ‘aced’ a cognitive test that included identifying a drawing of an elephant led to ridicule. Arguably, though, most damaging of all to his re-election chances, has been what many have called his catastrophic mishandling of the coronavirus – which he continues to call, the China virus – crisis. He has ignored stark warnings from Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease specialist, calling him ‘a little bit of an alarmist.’ He was lambasted by the medical community after suggesting research into whether the virus might be treated by injecting disinfectant into the body. And at one stage he claimed he ‘saved millions of lives by shutting things down,’ but later, with cases surging and the death toll mounting, he said, ‘We are going to lose millions of lives if we don’t open things back up.’ As always, Donald Trump has much to say, but have the majority of Americans finally heard enough?

What our surveys show

The results could hardly be more emphatic – Donald Trump is clearly unfit for office and even more clearly untrustworthy in his handling of the coronavirus crisis. But Trump is a fighter and has demonstrated many times that he’s not afraid to use dirty tactics. He will be desperate to cling on to power and build the legacy he believes he deserves, and he will hurl unprecedented billions of dollars into his re-election campaign. And despite what US polls are telling us, Trump does, and will, retain a core fanatical support base in many states. The election results may be close and, according to Hilary Clinton, even if he is defeated, Trump may refuse to go, claiming votes rigging. In that event, the almost unimaginable image of a President of the United States being escorted from the White House by armed guards would not be impossible.

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