This week, President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential contenders Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders each gave separate speeches in response to a rapidly escalating coronavirus outbreak in the United States. What did they say? How do their responses differ? And what do those speeches tell us about how their future (or current) administrations? Vox’s Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias discuss on this week’s 2020 election edition of The Weeds.

Then, how will coronavirus impact the general election in November? Matt and Ezra run through the political science research on how economic growth correlates with electoral success, how analogous situations (like severe weather events) have impacted past elections and more. Hint: things don’t look so great for Donald Trump.

For more conversations like this one, subscribe to The Weeds on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts!

Resources:

President Trump's oval office address

Joe Biden's coronavirus address

Bernie Sanders' coronavirus address

Hosts:

Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias), Senior correspondent, Vox

Ezra Klein (@ezraklein), Editor-at-large, Vox

About Vox

Vox is a news network that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines.

Facebook group: The Weeds

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode details and artwork are published by the show’s own feed. Sentinel plays short cited excerpts and links every episode back to its publisher.

← All episodes from Gray Area

Weeds 2020: The coronavirus election

Search the Record

Gray Area Episodes Around March 14, 2020

Antisemitism now, antisemitism then

Why We're Polarized, with Jamelle Bouie (live!)

Is Tom Steyer the solution to our dysfunctional politics?

Jill Lepore on what I get wrong

Tim Urban on humanity’s wild future

If God is dead, then … socialism?

Ta-Nehisi Coates on my “cold, atheist book”

What Donald Trump got right about white America

Barbara Ehrenreich on UBI, class conflict, and collective joy

Tracy K. Smith changed how I read poetry

Weeds 2020: The Bernie electability debate

Rebecca Solnit on Harvey Weinstein, feminism, and social change

What would a Sanders or Biden presidency look like?

Are you a "political hobbyist?" If so, you're the problem.

Dan Pfeiffer on Joe Biden, beating Trump, and saving democracy

Weeds 2020: The coronavirus election

A master class in organizing

"The virus is more patient than people are"

An economic crisis like we’ve never seen

Is the cure worse than the disease?

Coronavirus has pushed US-China relations to their worst point since Mao

What social solidarity demands of us in a pandemic

Elizabeth Warren has a plan for this, too

Toby Ord on existential risk, Donald Trump, and thinking in probabilities

Scott Gottlieb on how, and when, to end social distancing

Why Bernie Sanders lost and how progressives can still win

The loneliness pandemic/Betraying “essential workers”

An epic conversation with Madeline Miller

Bill Gates’s vision for life beyond coronavirus

What should the media learn from coronavirus?

An unusually honest conversation about wielding political power

Summary