T.S. Eliot famously called April “the cruelest month.” If U.S. President Donald Trump, not known as a fan of poetry, were honest with himself (another unknown), he would likely agree the month turned his tenure into a wasteland.
By April 28, the U.S. was leading the world with nearly 57,000 COVID-19 deaths and over 1 million confirmed coronavirus infections. A recent analysis by the Yale School of Public Health indicates that the number of pandemic-related deaths in the early months of 2020 far exceeded the official public estimates.
Another landmark reached by the end of April was that Trump had lost the faith of much of his own party on the pre-eminent issue facing the country. According to an AP poll released on April 23, only 47 percent of Republicans believed “quite a lot” in Trump’s claims of progress against the virus. And only 23 percent of all respondents expressed a high level of trust in him.