A new AP-NORC poll finds just 36% of Americans approve of the way President Trump is handling his job as president, while 62% disapprove.
“The numbers may be ugly for a first-term president facing reelection in 14 months, but they are remarkably consistent. Trump’s approval rating has never dipped below 32% or risen above 42% in AP-NORC polls since he took office. By comparison, President Barack Obama’s approval never dropped below 40% in polling by Gallup.”
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Dan Balz: “Tuesday turned out to be a busy day for President Trump. He poked another U.S. ally in the eye, questioned the loyalty of American Jews, backpedaled on gun legislation and undercut the denials of his advisers on the economy. It was just another normal day in the Trump administration.”
“Take Tuesday’s quartet case collectively, and it portrays an administration and White House in chaos, lacking in systematic policymaking. It portrays a president who changes his mind whenever it suits him, whose statements shift with the moment, and who uses words carelessly and sometimes destructively. It forms a pattern of dissembling, of deliberate or unknowing falsehoods as well as efforts to divide already divided Americans from one another.”
Politico: “As reporters shouted dozens of questions above the din of the helicopter’s churning blades, Trump picked the ones he wanted — on Greenland, Russia, the Fed and background checks for gun sales — and brushed past those he didn’t.”
“Wednesday’s careening, impromptu 35-minute news conference may have looked bizarre to veteran observers of the White House, not to mention maddening to television pros accustomed to high-quality audio and video production values. But there’s a method to the seeming madness.”
“The ‘Chopper Talk’ sessions, as comedian Stephen Colbert has dubbed them, serve multiple goals for Trump, reporters and White House insiders say. They allow him to speak more often in front of the cameras than his predecessors, yet firmly on his own terms. He scans the pack of reporters, seizing on questions he wants, while ignoring others. He makes headline-ready pronouncements and airs grievances for anywhere from a few minutes to a half-hour — and then walks away when he’s had enough.”
“President Trump decided long ago that it would be smart politics for him to yoke his administration to Israel and to try to brand the Democratic Party as anti-Semitic,” the Washington Post reports.
“He set about executing a pro-Israel checklist: Moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing the Golan Heights as part of sovereign Israel and taking a hard line against Iran. And he promoted himself as the greatest president ever — a deity even — for Jewish people.”
“Yet Trump has become flummoxed that Jewish Americans are not in turn lining up to support his reelection… and he has lashed out in predictable fashion.”
New York Times: “Some former Trump administration officials in recent days said they were increasingly worried about the president’s behavior, suggesting it stems from increasing pressure on Mr. Trump as the economy seems more worrisome and next year’s election approaches.”
President Trump claimed to laughter that he sought to give himself a Medal of Honor, “but decided not to after being counseled against the move by aides,” Politico reports.
President Trump said his life would be easier if he had not mounted a trade war with China but said “I am the chosen one” to take on Beijing, Reuters reports.
He added: “Somebody had to do it, so I’m taking on China. I’m taking on China on trade, and you know what? We’re winning.”
CNBC: “The president’s self-aggrandizing remark followed a string of criticisms aimed at his predecessors, whom he claimed had ignored China’s alleged malpractice on trade.”
“Nobody can be trusted. In my world, in this world, I think nobody can be trusted.”
— President Trump, when asked about the status of negotiations with the Taliban.
James Hohmann: “These erratic, contradictory pronouncements induce whiplash. They’re also de rigueur in this administration. This is a feature, not a bug, of Trumpism. During his first 928 days in office, Trump made more than 12,000 demonstrably false or misleading claims. Our Fact Checker has documented them in a database… There are dozens of separate examples of the president’s spokespeople – predating Gidley and Grisham – saying something adamantly, only to have the president cut their legs out from under them later in the day. Why would you take anything they or the president say at face value?”
“This behavior is riskier in challenging economic times. When the business cycle turns, the wherewithal of our system depends on people having as much confidence and certainty as possible. Trump and his White House flacks inspire neither feelings of confidence nor certainty. Trump’s penchant for contradicting himself and his aides, as well as changing his mind hastily, which together fuel the credibility gap, would be problematic in a financial crisis. Investors want a steady hand on the ship of state’s tiller. That’s how you prevent runs on the banks, freefalls in the stock market and freezes in business investment.”
First Read says President Trump’s cancellation of his trip to Denmark over them not being willing to sell Greenland shows the president’s “behavior in office isn’t getting better. Instead, it’s getting worse.”
“This is no way to run a country. Or to talk about its citizens. Or to treat an American ally.”
“Everyone who works in Washington knows this. Staff members at the White House know this. Top officials inside the Republican Party know this.”
“Yet here we are.”
President Trump shared a quote from a right-wing radio host who said Jews in Israel view Trump as “the King of Israel” and “the second coming of God.”
George Conway lashed out at White House staff on Twitter, slamming “these people who work for a rapist,” despite his wife Kellyanne Conway working as a senior counselor to President Trump.
This nugget was buried in a story from The Hill about the House Ways and Means Committee asking a federal judge to force the IRS to comply with subpoenas for six years of the president’s federal tax returns:
“The committee revealed in its new court filings that on July 29, it received an unsolicited communication from a federal employee it claims made credible allegations of possibly inappropriate efforts to influence the IRS’s mandatory audit program of presidents.”
“President Trump has filed financial disclosure statements that appear to misstate the value and profitability of his Scotland golf courses by $165 million, possibly violating federal laws that are punishable by jail time,” the HuffPost reports.
“Trump claimed in his 2018 U.S. filing that his Turnberry and Aberdeen resorts were each worth more than $50 million. For that same time period, he filed balance sheets with the United Kingdom government showing that their combined debt exceeded their assets by 47.9 million British pounds ― the equivalent of $64.8 million at the exchange rate on Dec. 31, 2017, the date of the last U.K. filing available.”
The latest Rasmussen Reports poll — President Trump’s favorite, oft-cited poll — shows that just 44% of likely voters approve of his job performance, while 54% disapprove.
For comparison, the FiveThirtyEight polling average has Trump’s approval at 41.9% to 53.9%.
Axios: “Trump is doing a lot: He has upended American politics, and his appointment of conservative judges will reverberate well beyond his presidency. But if — if — he were to be a one-term president, the substantive policy changes he’d leave behind could be short-lived.”
“Trump has scored few big legislative wins so far, and will instead head into 2020 with a policy record that comes largely from executive action, like regulations to expand bare-bones health insurance plans and roll back Obama-era energy standards.”
“But many of those actions would be at risk if he loses in 2020.”
Eugene Robinson: “The astonishing thing is that the president of the United States is, let’s face it, raving like a lunatic — and everyone just shrugs.”
“The nation is still reeling from two mass shootings. The financial markets are yo-yoing by hundreds of points. A bomb in Afghanistan, where we’re still at war, killed 63 revelers at a wedding. Tension between the United States and Iran continues to mount. North Korea keeps testing new missiles. India is playing with fire in Kashmir. Hong Kong has been convulsed for months by massive protests seeking to guarantee basic freedoms.”
“And Trump obsesses about buying Greenland.”
“The truth is that we don’t have an actual presidency right now. We have a tiresome reality show whose ratings have begun to slide — and whose fading star sees cancellation on the way.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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