While the daily media focuses on Trump’s actions….
People need to calmly look under the hood….
Trump has never had high approval ratings, in part because most of his policies are ill-thought out at best and deeply unpopular at worst. The beginning of a term is usually a honeymoon period when voters and other politicians give the president the benefit of the doubt. But that honeymoon is generally short, and there’s plenty of reason to believe that with Trump it will be even shorter.
But honeymoons don’t last, and we have a lot of experience with Trump indicating that his, in particular, won’t. Trump entered his first term with slightly positive approval ratings, but a month in he was already six points underwater, and things only got worse for him from there.
This wasn’t some sort of accident. Trump tends to be unpopular because he has no discipline, no knowledge of or interest in good government, and supports wildly unpopular policies. His first year in office during his first term was defined by his unpopular Muslim ban, his failed effort to repeal the ACA and strip healthcare from tens of millions of Americans, and the Unite The Right rally, when he referred to rioting neo-Nazis as “very fine people.”\
Trump Stumbles Out Of The Box, Pulling The Curtain Back From The Wizard
A new Reuters poll has the new President’s job approval at there-is-no-Honeymoon 47%, lower than his vote share in the November election. Reuters writes:
the poll also showed that Americans were already sour on some of his first moves. Some 58% of respondents said that Trump should not pardon all people convicted of crimes during the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.
look at this chart! Not only is trump lower than he was last time (when an entire gender marched against him!) but he is WAY lower than Biden was and we all know what happened to Biden’s popularity.
Nielsen had the inauguration at 24.59 million viewers, compared to 33.76 million for Biden’s 2021 inauguration and 30.64 million for Trump’s first in 2021. The figures combine the viewers for the 15 networks that covered it live.
… Even worse for Trump and the networks who covered it were the demographics of the viewers. In the crucial under-55 demo for advertisers, only 6.1 million watched. Only a microscopic 1.43 million in the 18-34 demo. 71% of the viewers were over 55.
Things will get worse before they get better, but hope isn’t completely lost. As we discussed yesterday, Trump’s popularity has nowhere to go but down, and the next electoral tests of strength will approach quicker than we think. In the meantime, we have to preserve what we can while trying to protect our people. We can’t prevent Trump from pardoning violent insurrectionists, gutting our pandemic preparedness (again), or implementing brutal deportation policies. But we can try to make sure that Republicans pay a political price at the next opportunity for enabling what he’s already doing to the country.
Dems – thank God – won’t let the J6 pardons fade into the background
Once again, our dude Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy is telling it like it is on the Senate floor: “Political violence in this country just become mainstream. It is now a fact of life in America. If you commit an act of horrific violence in the name of the POTUS, that president will make sure you get away with it. That is fundamentally un-American.”
And some House Ds were letting it rip too, thank goodness. Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, responding to some Republican bleating about law and order, said “The chairman began by saying the point here is to restore the rule of law. Can you even pretend to do that if you support Trump who on day one pardoned 1,500 insurrectionists including hundreds of people who violently assaulted police officers?” Yes, this! Hang this around their necks!
And there was Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern with this banger in response to MAGA Mike telling him that it wasn’t “his place” to question Trump’s pardon of the j6 thugs:
McGovern: “Not your place?? Who the hell’s place is it? How about you stand with the officers who protected you, rather than stand with a reality show wannabe dictator.” Oh, burn man!
For what it’s worth, apparently “the people” don’t like the pardons. A new Reuters poll shows that 58% of Americans say they were opposed to Trump’s pardon of ANY January 6 criminals, let alone the ones who admitted to beating the shit out of cops. Huh. Too bad no one told them he was going to do it. (Insert head into wood chipper.)
If history is any guide, this is not likely to be the last time that you hear about these people.
Trump promised to “free” the Jan. 6 defendants on his first day back in office, and he has now followed through on that promise. But this will not be a one-day story, and Trump — and the Republican Party — may come to regret the political costs of this decision.
For starters, Trump’s blanket pardon is unpopular, and it could help to frame early perceptions of his return to the White House. After the election, multiple polls reported that somewhere around two-thirds of Americans opposed Trump’s promise to pardon the Jan. 6 defendants, including about two-thirds of independents.
That is just the short-term fallout. The potential for political backlash will linger for months and years to come. That’s because the Jan. 6 defendants are not just going to evaporate into society.
Even the police have stood up against this garbage
The country’s largest police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, has spoken out against the pardons, as has the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote: “Law and order? Back the blue? What happened to that [Republican Party]?” “What happened [on January 6, 2021] is a stain on Mr. Trump’s legacy,” it wrote. “By setting free the cop beaters, the President adds another.”
Mark Jacob of Stop the Presses commented: “Republicans—the Jailbreak Party.”
One of the pardoned individuals is already back in prison on a gun charge, illustrating, as legal analyst Joyce White Vance said, why Trump should have evaluated “prior criminal history, behavior in prison, [and] risk of dangerousness to the community following release. Now,” she said, “we all pay the price for him using the pardon power as a political reward.” On social media, Heather Thomas wrote: “So when all was said and done, the only country that opened [its] prisons and sent crazy murderous criminals to prey upon innocent American citizens, was us…
The Price of eggs is higher
No, high prices are not good news. But Trump ran — and won — on his promises to make things cheaper. And it isn’t going to take long for people to see that this isn’t happening. No, his base won’t care. But the people who swung to give him this election will.
The Promise that Trump Will Come to Deeply Regret
Donald Trump’s low-energy inaugural address was filled with promises. Many were vague (“The golden age of America begins right now.”); others were weirdly messianic (“I was saved by God to make America great again.”); many were specific promises made on the campaign trail (“I will declare a national emergency at our southern border”). Within hours of taking the oath of office, Trump began fulfilling several of those promises. He also fulfilled one significant campaign promise strategically unnamed during the speech — pardoning 1,600 January 6th rioters.
But among all of the promises Trump made on his first day in office, there is one he may come to regret more than any other:
I will direct all members of my cabinet to marshal the vast powers at their disposal to defeat what was record inflation and rapidly bring down costs and prices.
Here’s why:
High prices were the dominant factor in the election. The voters who switched from Biden to Trump and the folks who voted for Trump the first time are even more focused on high prices than the electorate at large. Put another way, Trump won despite, not because of, his topics during his inaugural address and what he did during his first few days in office….
Note….
I did a similar post almost 10 years ago , when Trump started his term…
He LOST THATv re-election try, eh?
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