2020 race: Woodward’s Trump book virus claims no Watergate moment

Associate Editor of the Washington Post Bob Woodward, left, maintains the Rage in his new book on US President Donald Trump. Picture: AFP

The revelations in Bob Woodward’s new book that Donald Trump deliberately misrepresented the dangers of the coronavirus may not be the game-changer that Democrats hope for.

The disclosures in the Watergate authors’s new book, Rage, has the Trump campaign on the defensive as it fends off angry attacks from Joe Biden and the Democrats as well as a hostile US media.

The Biden campaign hopes this is a “gotcha” moment in this election campaign — catching the president admitting that the virus was no worse than the flu in February when he already knew it was “deadly”.

Trump says he was just trying to avoid panic by hiding the unpalatable truth while Biden calls it a “life-and-death betrayal of the American people”.

But there are two points to make here. This first is that the disclosure is not good for Trump regardless of how the Republicans try to spin it. But the larger point is that very few votes are likely to be changed by these revelations. Why? Because voters have largely delivered their verdict on Trump’s handling of the pandemic, and it is already a fail.

That doesn’t mean Trump will lose the election — many different issues will influence voters and Trump is still very much in the game — it just means that on the issue of the pandemic, many voters have already made their minds up.

Polls show that just one in three voters approve of the President’s handling of the virus. Those one-in-three voters are diehard Trump supporters; they are a part of the 35-40 per cent of American voters that are as loyal to Trump as the day is long.

These voters have never abandoned Trump on any issue and are hardly likely to suddenly abandon him because a new book raises fresh questions about the way he has handled the pandemic.

Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic is already factored into the current polls which gives Biden a lead of around 7 points nationally.

Many of those who oppose Trump’s handling of the virus, which has killed almost 200,000 Americans, are fully aware of his failures in the early months of the pandemic.

These include his repeated dismissal of the virus as something that was totally under control, would miraculously disappear and was no worse than the flu.

It was obvious to many of those who watched him utter these words at the time that there was a disconnect between his words and reality.

Trump’s confirmation to Woodward that he deliberately downplayed the truth is therefore hardly a shock, although that doesn’t make it right.

In downplaying the virus, Trump encouraged Americans not to take it seriously until the spread was impossible to stop. It certainly contributed to many more deaths than was necessary although many others also bungled the early days of the pandemic including state governors and city mayors.

But those who oppose Trump’s handling of the pandemic already hold this view about him — Woodward’s book merely confirms their conviction and as such, is unlikely to change many votes.

The impact of the Woodward revelations is also likely to be diluted by the furious pace of the news cycle in this campaign.

Trump has had a barrage of hostile books and articles thrown at him of late, from The Room Where It Happened by former National Security Adviser John Bolton, to Too Much and Never Enough by Trump’s niece Mary Trump and the recent prominent article in The Atlantic which claimed Trump called Americans who died in war “losers” and “suckers”.

So far none of these highly critical and highly publicised portrayals of the President have had an impact on the polls, which have stayed remarkably steady for more than a month.

Despite all the noise and smoke being generated by Woodward’s book, it is also unlikely to change the course of this race. This will not be Woodward’s new Watergate moment.

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Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia