At a campaign event in Allentown, Pennsylvania on Wednesday, former President Donald Trump asked the crowd a question Ronald Reagan also asked voters in the 1980 election against Jimmy Carter, and one many presidents before have asked. “Are you better off now then you were four years ago?” Trump said.
Despite a mixed bag of Reagan's escalation of the War on Drugs, Reaganomics, and his response to the AIDS crisis, the majority of Americans apparently did think they were better off after Reagan’s first term in office, and he won in a landslide victory. When Trump asks the question, however, he is zeroing in on the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — before stay-at-home orders were initiated and vaccines were rolled out — when the Trump Administration was discouraging mask wearing and toying with the idea of trying to reach herd immunity while public anxiety went through the roof.
