Poll Watch: Opportunities and Blessings

I'm sure by now you've heard about the bizarre, "someone put something in the juice cups again" public portion of Trump's cabinet meeting. You know, the one where everyone sat around and told their fearless leader how fabulous he was?

Trump, of course, tooted his own horn.

Never has there been a president, with few exceptions - case of FDR, he had a major depression to handle - who has passed more legislation and who has done more things than what we've done. I think we've been about as active as you can possibly be at just about record-setting pace.

Oh, the #winning and the #recordsetting, #Icantstandit I truly can't. I don't know that anyone was prepared for Reince Priebus and his remarks, though.

On behalf of the entire senior staff around you, Mr. President, we thank you for the opportunity and the blessing that you've given us to serve you agenda and the American people. And we're continuing to work very hard every day to accomplish those goals. 

In light of his statement, and that of the others talking about the "honor" and "privilege" to serve this president, when they were simply asked to introduce themselves and the department they work in, I thought it would be fun to juxtapose the Cabinet members' sentiments with those of the American people.

Here are some key callouts from a recent Gallup poll

• Trump's approval - 37% 
• his weekly disapproval - 58%, highest of his administration
• only 8% of Democrats approve; 83% of Republicans do.

The approval rating among republicans is down three points from his average, which is not a great sign, I don't think.  Among independents, his approval rating of 41% is five points lower than his average there. 

And, let's see what people are saying over at Public Policy Polling.

• Angela Merkel (+11), Justin Trudeau (+11), Emmanuel Macron (+7) and even Theresa May (+4) are seen more favorably by Americans than our own president (-14) based on their net favorability scores/
• Clinton voters particularly like Merkel and Trudeau; Trump voters only like the British PM.
• Only 24% of all voters support the AHCA (aka the WeDon'tCare Act), with 55% opposing; only 42% o Republicans support the darn thing
• Staying on health care, the ACA is the preferred path, with 51% approving vs. 34% not, and 35%  think the Republican's repeal and replace the right answer; 59% favor keep and fix.  

Dean Debnam, the president of PPP, tells us that

Six weeks after the initial passage of the AHCA voter anger over it isn't subsiding. It continues to be the biggest issue driving a Democratic advantage in 2018.

Why? Because, according to their polls, voters says they're less like to vote for a member of Congress who supported the ACHA (48%) than someone who favored it (24%).

Quinnipiac polling tells a similar story, one that is not all that positive for the president, regardless of his bigly opinion of himself. Let's look at Russia for example.

• A majority of Americans think there's something amiss with Trump's own dealings with Russia; 31% this he did something illegal, with another 29% saying he did something unethical.
• When it comes to Trump's campaign advisors, 40% think there was something illegal going on and 25% think there was unethical behavior. 
• 54% think Trump is too friendly with Russia; 68% are "very" or "somewhat concerned" over Trump's relationship with Russia, a country 45% of voters think is our adversary, not our ally (only 8%). 

Those numbers aren't out of line, given the general lack of consideration for ethical behaviors show by everyone from the lawyers to the cabinet members, and of course there's the Trump Organization, and the bad charities, and the Access Hollywood tape, and more.  Back to the poll:

• Trump's approval rating is even lower -- 34%, down from 37% in May and 35% in April.  

It gets worse.

• 68% say Trump is not level-headed (although 64% of Republicans think he is).
• 59% think he is not honest
• 58% think he doesn't have good leadership skills
• 58% think he doesn't care about average Americans
• 64% think he doesn't share their values

There was some good news, though, which I'm sure will make it into an early morning tweet.

• 62% think he's a strong person; 57% think he's intelligent. 

Even at Fox News, the poll is not showing great things.

• 53% think Trump's agenda and presidency are coming apart
• On taxes, 54% think our current system is worth keeping, with some tweaks - but not major changes
• On the AHCA, 54% oppose the bill; 45% strongly oppose it. 
• 53% think Obamacare has been good for the country (in 2014, 52% thought it was bad for the country)
• Only 51%  are concerned about illegal immigration, a drop from 71% back in September 2010
• And, finally, on climate change, the pendulum has swung from 46% concerned (February 2013) to 60% in the most recent poll

Sure, Reince, the blessings are great, but even among his most friendly audience, things are not looking so good. 

Perhaps there are some other opportunities out there you might want to look at?

Fairly Unbelievable

"Fairly unbelievable" is how White House press secretary and Melissa McCarthy impersonator Sean Spicer described how the president would describe his relationship with Angela Merkel. Honest.

Q. Sean, where do you see the states of the US-German relationship right now? And how important is that relationship to the president and the American public?

A. I think the relationship that the president has had with Merkel he would describe as fairly unbelievable. They get along very well. He has a lot of respect for her. They continue to grow the bond that they had during their talks in the G7. 

Cool, huh?

Fairly unbelievable could also be used to describe a whole lot of other stuff in the news, coming from or about this administration.

For example, could the Department of Homeland Security be making public information on  domestic violence victims and children who have been trafficked? Fairly unbelievable, I know, but it seems to be true.  DHS, you recall, created the Victims of Immigrant Crime Engagement (VOICE) office,  at the president's request and to further his efforts at casting illegal immigrants as the rapists, murderers and drug dealers he told us about as a candidate. To go along with VOICE, there was a database, called DHS-VINE (Victim Information and Notification Exchange) where people can track the cases of the bad hombres who are committing crimes against white Americans, above and beyond being in the country illegally.

Unfortunately, the database includes the names, addresses and other information of illegal immigrants who happen to be crime victims themselves, including domestic violence and trafficking victims - which means that it will allow their abusers to keep tabs on them, when they were released, and so on.

"We're concerned that DHS does not seem to be seriously considering the concerns of victims of crime," says Archi Pyati, chief of policy for the Tahirih Justice Center. The inclusion of survivors' information, she says, is a violation of federal law protecting the information of people applying for special visas or other protections for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or human trafficking.  

DHS says it will remove the information, although pressure will be kept on them to make sure it happens.

Or, this example. Could it be possible that about half of president Trump's Twitter followers are fake? Fairly unbelievable, I know, but it appears to be true. There's this software called Twitter Audit, which allows an analysis of any Twitter user's followers to determine if they're real users (people who actually have profiles, and who tweet) or bots or otherwise added to pad the all-important bottom line. You can buy those, if you're so vain.  Anyway, Trump's analysis shows he has about 51% fake followers. According to this article,

This isn't the first time someone has pointed out that a good portion of Trump's Twitter following is fake, but what's interesting is that its fakeness seems to be increasing. In January, journalist Yashar Ali ran an audit on Trump's Twitter account and found that 68% of his then 20 million followers were real. Now he's at 30 million followers, but only 51% are real, which means of 10 million followers Trump has gained since January, about 8.3 million are fake. 

The article also notes that President Obama has both more followers in total than Trump (89 million to 30 million) and a much higher percentage of real ones (79% to 51%). Nothing unbelievable about that...

Or, how about this one? Could Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross really be as clueless as he sounded, talking about the reaction in Saudi Arabia when Trump was there?  Watch the video, or take a look below at a transcript of his interview with Becky Quick:

Ross: There's no question that they're liberalizing their society. And I think the other thing that was fascinating to me: There was not a single hint of a protester anywhere there during the whole time we were there. Not one guy with a bad placard. Instead...

Fairly unbelievable?  You betcha!  Ross doubled down:

Quick: But Secretary Ross, that may be not necessarily because they don't have those feelings there, but because they control people and don't allow them to come and express their feelings quite the same as we do here.

Ross: In theory, that could be true, but boy there was certainly no sign of it. There was not a single effort at any incursion. There wasn't anything. The mood was a genuinely good mood. And at the end of the trip, as I was getting back on the plane, the security guards from the Saudi side who'd been helping us over the weekend all wanted to pose for a big photo op, And then they gave me two gigantic bushels of dates as a present, as a think you for the trip that we had had. That was a pretty from the heart very genuine gesture and it really touched me.  

In theory? Seriously? Is he Secretary of Commerce, or Secretary of Comedy?

And finally, I leave you with these tweets, which nicely summarize our fairly unbelievable president.
Read the first series (they're in reverse sequence) to understand Trump's opinion on unnamed sources used in articles about him or his administration.

And then, of course, this retweet by the president two days later, speaks for itself.