The Washington Post has been fiercely critical of Trump since long before his election. Yet as the paper described his administration as barreling "toward calamity" this week, a Washington Post-ABC News poll recorded Trump's highest ever approval rating, with 48 percent of respondents giving the president the thumbs-up, compared to 46 percent disapproving.

That's the first time Trump has scored positively on the Post's poll, but when it comes to his handling of the ongoing pandemic which has killed more than 1,300 Americans thus far, the president's results are even better. Fifty-one percent approve of his stewardship, while 45 percent don't.

The results are played out across the board. Polls from Fox News, the Economist, Reuters, Gallup, Emerson and Axios all show positive results for Trump. Gallup's poll found that 60 percent of Americans support Trump's response to the crisis, while only 38 percent disapprove. Trump's handling of the crisis has translated into a record high job approval rating in an average of national polls.

Yet the media tells a different story. President Trump's daily press briefings are - to quote one NPR station in Seattle - so full of "false or misleading information" that the station will no longer air them.

Staff at CNN and MSNBC have reportedly pleaded with network bosses to drop coverage of the briefings, and the New York Times ran a column on Thursday wondering aloud "should networks cover them?" Individual news personalities have excoriated the president for allegedly spreading baloney. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow said on her show this week that if Trump "keeps lying...it's going to cost lives."

But the public isn't listening. The same Gallup poll whose respondents rated Trump at 60 percent found that out of all the institutions responding to the pandemic, Americans rated the news media the worst, with only 44 percent of Americans expressing any trust in it. Even Congress, a perennially unpopular institution in these kinds of surveys, scored higher than the media.

Describing the virus as an "invisible enemy," Trump told reporters last week that "I view it as a, in a sense, a wartime president." Whether Trump manages to keep the public on side as the death toll climbs, however, depends on his actions in the coming weeks.

Washington's decision to indict Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on drug charges is "a new form of coup d'etat," as well as a move to win over hispanic voters in Florida, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza has claimed. [He] said that the indictments show the "desperation" of the "Washington elite," and their "obsession" with the Latin American country. According to Arreaza, the drug charges are simply "a new form of coup d'etat."

Arreaza added on Thursday that he believes the Justice Department's real aim with the latest indictments is to reap "electoral returns" for Trump in the state of Florida. Southern Florida has the highest population of Venezuelans in the United States, at more than 100,000. The state is also home to more than a million Cuban-Americans, many of whom fled their home country during the rule of Fidel Castro, and hold an unfavorable view of Maduro, an ally of Cuba.

Maduro himself has not yet responded to the charges, but his supporters in the region have condemned Washington for the move. Former Bolivian President Evo Morales - himself removed from power in a coup last year - called the indictments an attempt to "intimidate the legal and legitimate government of Venezuela," with the goal of getting American hands on the country's vast oil reserves.

Former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa was more colloquial in his condemnation. "Trump really is nuts, or just looking to distract attention from his lousy handling of the health crisis," the ex-leader tweeted.

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