Fox’s Martha MacCallum: Trump facing ‘very difficult six months’ on economy

Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum says she wants to get the “big picture and personal reaction” from President Trump during a COVID-19 virtual town hall Sunday night regarding what she sees as a “very difficult six months” on the economy.

The 7:00 p.m. town hall, “America Together: Returning to Work,” will take place from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has resulted in more than 30 million Americans applying for unemployment benefits in the past five weeks. Many small businesses are still shut down under stay-at-home orders issued in most states in the country.

MacCallum, along with “Special Report” anchor Bret Baier, will moderate the two-hour event, with the network indicating that 90 minutes will be dedicated to questions being asked by viewers to the president.

“At this point, the president looks at a very difficult six months, because of what’s going on with the virus and economy, and that’s what he’s going to be evaluated on,” MacCallum told The Hill in a phone interview regarding a possible referendum on Trump in the November presidential election.

“We’ve had an enormous amount of stimulus that will add to the debt for generations, so there’s some very big questions here,” MacCallum added. “And I want to get his reaction to how he sees all of this, big picture, and then we’re speaking to Americans from across the country who have specific and personal concerns, and they’re going to be looking for some good answers from the president. So big picture, and personal.”

MacCallum also said the media has not sufficiently focused of the high death toll among nursing homes residents in some parts of the country since COVID-19 hit the U.S. in February, and hopes the president will be asked about the topic Sunday night. 

“This is the part of the story that really was underserved in the early weeks of coverage here,” says MacCallum. “It really is awful and incredible that this started in a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington was the first real hotbed. We saw all those individuals that were dying in there.”

The Life Care Center in Kirkland, linked to dozens of COVID-19 deaths, is facing fines of more than $600,000 following an investigation by federal and state inspectors that allegedly discovered a myriad of issues in how the elder care facility handled the outbreak.

“This is a question in my mind that I think still needs to be answered: Why did we not surge PPEs and help to these institutions because it was always clear from what we saw in other countries that the older part of our population was the most vulnerable?’ she asked, referring to personal protective equipment.

“A lot of times there’s this dismissive language when discussing this that way and I believe a lot of these people could have been saved. Now I’m not a doctor, but I’d like to see more evidence if more of these people could have saved,” MacCallum continued

“We’ve already lost 12,000 people in these institutions. So of these places are very well run, some are not. It’s an investigative question we’re going to continue to dig into. So I absolutely hope that we get a question or two on this with the president on Sunday,” she added.

The overall coronavirus  death toll in the U.S. stands at more than 67,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Sunday night’s town hall will mark Trump’s second in less than a month with Baier and MacCallum.

The president’s Mar. 6 Fox News town hall from Scanton, Penn., was the most-watched town hall in cable news history, attracting 4.2 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

MacCallum came to Fox News from CNBC in 2004 and was awarded a primetime program, “The Story” in Apr. 2017.