How distrust of Trump muddled the lab-leak debate

The most telling slice of that “honest and trustworthy” metric is Trump’s decline among fellow Republicans. At the start of his presidency, 81% of Republicans described Trump that way. By June of 2020, the figure had fallen nine percentage points. The fact that a staggering 3-in-10 Republicans didn’t see him as an honest conveyor of fact speaks volumes to just how little credibility Trump had. (It will shock no one that 91% of Democrats said they did not see Trump as an “honest and trustworthy” figure.) Seldom has the nation seen such a profound and self-inflicted trust deficit in its leader. Trump may have been telling us things that we now know could be true. He may have been able to save his re-election bid had he prosecuted the evidence that is now emerging in a way that resonated with independents and even a few Democrats in the Midwest who still harbor deep animosity toward China for the collapse of the industrial core. He may even have rallied the world to step up pressure on the WHO and China to open its doors in a meaningful way for inspectors. Instead, Trump had squandered that pulpit by the time he reached his final year in power by embracing all manner of nonsense. He started 2020 on trial for deputizing foreign leaders to dig up dirt on his rival’s family and ended it claiming his victory was stolen. Trump didn’t tell the truth about either—and a whole lot more, to be honest—and is now banned from social media.
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