President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus crisis and widespread protests over racial injustice have led him to “big trouble” before the November election, according to a policy expert.
Speaking to CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe” on Friday, Inderjeet Parmar, professor of international politics at City University, said Trump had received two political gifts but had wasted them.
“The pandemic, deadly as it turned out, was an opportunity for him to unite the country, rise above political factionalism, and act effectively as President of the United States in an emergency period,” Parmar said.
“He did not, and he is in serious trouble because of that … President Trump has made his bed, and I think he is going to pay a terrible price in the end, and that number is already being paid by a large number of Americans, both in terms of their health and in terms of the economy. “
A White House spokesman was not immediately available to comment when CNBC contacted him.
According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, there have been more than 2.7 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 128,740 deaths from the virus in the US The United States has recorded the highest number of infections and the highest number of deaths due to the coronavirus in the world.
National protests sparked by the police murder of George Floyd had also seen Trump offer “nothing in connection with any kind of significant sympathy,” Parmar added.
“I think what it has shown is when it comes to real emergencies, when you need real leadership, it doesn’t really have that kind of quality,” he said. “He talks about the people, but he doesn’t seem to know that the people’s interests lie in their economic well-being and their physical and personal security.”
Parmar said that Trump’s response to both crises would weigh heavily on his chances for reelection in November.
“Trump has done a lot for candidate Biden, so Biden can almost sit in his chair in the basement and reap the rewards of President Trump’s total indifference to such a large set of problems in the United States,” he said.
Meanwhile, Parmar noted that Biden had been spreading through the Democratic Party and opponents he had in the primaries.
“It’s actually building bridges or moving a little more to the left, and it has opened a space for people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Cortez and others, and I think their voices will be stronger in that administration,” he said. foretold.
Because of this, however, Parmar acknowledged that the financial markets may have something to worry about, as a Biden presidency would likely lead to a greater focus on social programs.
“The broad market-oriented neoliberal consensus has been shaken by government responses to the pandemic,” he told CNBC. “But I think the underlying philosophy of the market, I don’t think it has been defeated, I think it will continue. So I suspect a lot of people will still be very unhappy.”
CNBC’s latest Change Research poll showed Trump had slumped against Biden in the polls, with Biden’s support in several key battlefield states.
Analysts at The Economist’s Intelligence Unit said in a report last month that while the presidential election would be closely fought, “the odds have now firmly shifted in Biden’s favor.” The EIU cited several reasons for the change in support, but investigators emphasized the importance of how Trump had handled the Covid-19 outbreak and the Black Lives Matter protests.
In June, Jonathan Lieber of the Eurasia Group told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” that Trump was “on the wrong side” of public opinion polls when it came to the Black Lives Matter movement, which was beginning to seriously damage indices of approval of the president in the race. Until the elections.
.
