Poll Watch: Trump, Congress, Impeachment, and Terrorist Takedowns

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll is out, and contrary to what the Tweeter in Chief believes, things are not all sunshine and lollipops out here in America.

First, the small print: the survey was taken 10/27 - 10/30, (before the vote to move forward with a formal impeachment inquiry) and included a random sample of 1003 adults, 65% of whom were reached by cell phone, with the remaining 35% answering landline calls. The error margin is +/- 3.5%.

Here are a few highlights:

• Trump's approval rating remains underwater at -20, (38% approve, 58% disapprove);
• By +26, (54% to 28%) people think his policies make us less respected around the world; adding insult to injury on that question, President Obama was at +6;
• And, by +36 (66% to 30%), people think he acts in an unpresidential way, and 58% of the 'unpresidential' respondents believe he acts in a 'way that is damaging' to the presidency as a whole.
• Like her predecessors Newt Gingrich (-20) and Paul Ryan (-13), Nancy Pelosi (-10) is underwater on her approval rating. In her previous stint as Speaker in 2007 (+18) she joined John Boehner (+13) as House Speakers above water on this.

We're so lucky, or something.

What else do we Americans think? Let's take a look.

• 49% of us (44% strongly) believe Trump should be impeached and removed from office, while 47% (37% strongly) think he shouldn't. This is reflective of results from an October WaPo/Schar School poll, where the same percentage believed he should be impeached and removed. For comparison, only 33% thought Bill Clinton should suffer the same fate. 

• A majority of us disapprove of both how the House and the president have handled the impeachment issue so far, but Trump is the big loser here, underwater by -24 compared to the House, at -7.

• A majority - 65% - think that hearings should be held in public; the survey misrepresents what's been happening so far, which have been depositions which historically have been held in private. 

• We're pretty well set in what we think of the motivations of Democrats and Republicans. 51% believe the former are  mainly interested in hurting the president, while 55% think the latter are mainly interested in helping him. We don't think the Ds are all that interested in upholding the Constitution (43%) but that's better than the Rs, at 36%. 

• And, no matter what people think about impeachment, by a net +20 (55% to 35%), we believe he did something wrong, with 47% thinking what he did was seriously wrong.

On the other hot topic of the day, the raid on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, we get to review our opinions on that compared to similar questions asked about President Obama's raid on Osama bin Laden.

The first question was on how much credit the president deserves for "the killing of" al-Baghdadi - even though we know, of course, that he committed suicide. And no, I don't think that's splitting hairs, I think it's truthful and honest. Similarly, I don't think it's splitting hairs to differentiate between depositions and hearings, or between a transcript and a summary memorandum... but I digress.

Here are the survey results for both presidents on the 'credit' question.

Trump's raid was perceived as making us safer than Obama's (26% to 21%)  while Obama's raid was seen to make us a bit more at risk (19% to Trump's 16%).  But overall, in both cases, more than half of us thought it would not make much difference (54% for Trump, 58% for Obama). We'll have to wait and see what happens to know for sure. 

Sunday School Extra Credit: 10/27/19

 "Aboooo. Baccahhhrrr. Al. Bag-daddy. Is dead."

Thus spoke the president in his prepared remarks yesterday morning.

As I mentioned in our Sunday School post, much of the conversation in the classrooms were about the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, by suicide (not by killing, as has been repeatedly and incorrectly reported).

For this week's extra credit, let's look at what the president himself had to say. I've left out his prepared remarks, read emotionlessly from the TelePrompTer, as always, and I've tried - and it wasn't easy, I can assure you, but I've really tried - to bucket related comments from the open mic that followed the official statement.

On al-Baghdadi himself
Trump said  "from the first day" he came to office, he would say "Where's al-Baghdadi? I want al-Baghdadi."

And we would kill terrorist leaders, but they were names I never heard of. They were names that weren’t recognizable and they weren’t the big names. Some good ones, some important ones, but they weren’t the big names. I kept saying, “Where’s al-Baghdadi?”  

When Trump focuses on something, he tweets and tweets and tweets about it. And yet, with all the alleged focus on al-Baghdadi, there are only two references in his Twitter archive - under any spelling of the ISIS leader's name - one from 2017 and one from 2015. Perhaps he wasn't as focused on this as he said?

Asked if he heard al-Baghdadi 'whimpering' on the video feed he was watching, Trump said

I don’t want to talk about it, but - he was screaming, crying, and whimpering. And he was scared out of his mind.

Later, though, he said that al-Baghdadi "died in a ruthless, vicious manner. That, I can tell you."

Asked if the Syria pullout generated any intelligence for the raid,

No.  We were looking at this -  look, as I said, Steve, I’ve been looking at this -  I’m here almost three years. I’ve been looking at this for three years. They’d come in, “Sir, we have somebody under…”  - I said, “I don’t want somebody. I want al-Baghdadi. That’s the one I want.” They’d said, “Well, we have somebody else.” I said, “That’s great.  Fine. Take them out. But I want al-Baghdadi. That’s who I want. I don’t want other people.” 

As to the operation itself, and participants

One reporter asked if Trump went straight to the Situation Room when he got back to the White House around 4:30, after some golf.

Well, I knew all about this for three days. Yeah. We thought, for three days, this is what was going to happen. It was actually - look, nobody was even hurt. Our K-9, as they call - I call it a dog, a beautiful dog, a talented dog - was injured and brought back. But we had no soldier injured. 

He added to the obfuscation on the timing with this head-scratching comment.

You know, you would think you go through the door. If you’re a normal person, you say, “Knock, knock. May I come in?”  The fact is that they blasted their way into the house and a very heavy wall, and it took them literally seconds.  By the time those things went off, they had a beautiful, big hole, and they ran in and they got everybody by surprise. Unbelievably brilliant, as fighters.  I don’t - I can’t imagine there could be anybody better. And these, as you know, are our top operations people.

And then there was the identification part of this, the 'jackpot!' moment, if you will.

So, that’s another part of the genius of these people. They brought his - they have his DNA. More of it than they want, even. And they brought it with them with lab technicians who were with them. And they assumed that this was Baghdadi. They thought, visually, it was him. But they assumed it was him, and they did a site - an onsite test. They got samples.

Visually? I thought the guy was blown to bits? 

...  and they, as I said, they brought body parts back with them, et cetera, et cetera. There wasn’t much left. The - the vest blew up, but there are still substantial pieces that they brought back. So they did an onsite test because we had to know this. And it was a very quick call that took place about 15 minutes after he was killed, and it was positive. It was - it’s, “This is a confirmation, sir.”

When asked, he was unable to articulate which of our teams participated in the raid, which is incredible, given Trump's propensity for loving our military and crowing about how they love him.

Many of them, and at the top level. And people that were truly incredible at their craft. I've never seen anything like it. 

The Special Forces teams will be invited to the White House, he said - presumably for hamberders.

Oh, yeah. They’ll be invited. I don’t know if they’ll want to have their faces shown, to be honest with you. You know, they want to - they’re incredible for the country. They’re not looking for public relations. But they love doing what they’re doing. I’ve seen it. The First Lady was out there, recently, looking at what they do. She came back, she said, “Wow, I’ve never seen anything like that.” 

And then he talked about history, when asked about any successors to al-Baghdadi.

Yeah. We know the successors. And we’ve already got them in our sights. And we’ll tell you that right now, but we know the successors. Hamza bin Laden was a big thing, but this is the biggest there is. This is the worst ever.

Osama bin Laden was very big, but Osama bin Laden became big with the World Trade Center. This is a man who built a whole, as he would like to call it, “a country,” a caliphate, and was trying to do it again.

Regarding the US intelligence community

And he pointed out that "some incredible intelligence officials" did a great job, saying "That's what they should be focused on." And, we can infer, not doing other intelligence stuff like making sure the president is not acting like a lunatic. And there were smart people involved, too.

We were involved, on our own team, with some brilliant people who I’ve gotten to know. Brilliant people that love our country. Highly intelligent people... 

And speaking of loving our people, our great intelligence community,  there's this response to a question on whether we had any intel assistance from others.

We got very little help. We didn’t need very much help. We have some incredible people. When we use our intelligence correctly, what we can do is incredible. When we waste our time with intelligence, that hurts our country, because we had poor leadership at the top... But the people that I’ve been dealing with are incredible people. And it’s really a deserving name: “intelligence.” I’ve dealt with some people that aren’t very intelligent, having to do with intel, but this is the top people and it was incredible.   

Trying to act presidential

On whether he had told Congressional leaders,  that's a negative, at least Pelosi is a negative.

We’ve notified some. Others are being notified now, as I speak. We were going to notify them last night but we decided not to do that because Washington leaks like I’ve never seen before. There’s nothing - there’s no country in the world that leaks like we do...  

And he watched this, like he was watching a baseball game or something (minus the "lock him up" chanting, of course), with "a few of the Joint Chiefs...some generals. We had some very great military people in that room. And we had some great intelligence people... It was great."  

And he of course complained about our allies, because they didn't want their ISIS fighters back.

And I actually said to them, “If you don’t take them, I’m going to drop them right on your border. And you can have fun capturing them again.”

He reiterated that he did not inform House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

No, I didn’t.  I didn’t do - I didn’t do that. I wanted to make sure this kept secret. I don’t want to have men lost - and women. I don’t want to have people lost.  

Someone tried again on what time Trump went to the SitRoom.

Well, I started at five o’clock. We were pretty much gathered at five o’clock yesterday.  We were in contact all day long through, hopefully, secure phones. I’ll let you know tomorrow. But nothing seemed to leak, so I guess they were secure, for a change.

The oil The Oil THE OIL

Look, we don’t want to keep soldiers between Syria and Turkey for the next 200 years. They’ve been fighting for hundreds of years. We’re out. But we are leaving soldiers to secure the oil. And we may have to fight for the oil. It’s okay. Maybe somebody else wants the oil, in which case they have a hell of a fight. But there’s massive amounts of oil.

And we’re securing it for a couple of reasons. Number one, it stops ISIS, because ISIS got tremendous wealth from that oil. We have taken it. It’s secured. Number two - and again, somebody else may claim it, but either we’ll negotiate a deal with whoever is claiming it, if we think it’s fair, or we will militarily stop them very quickly... 

And there was this:

They’re going to have to make their own decision. The Kurds have worked along incredibly with us, but in all fairness, it was much easier dealing with the Kurds after they went through three days of fighting, because that was a brutal three days... 

Let that last part sink in for a moment. Really let that one sink in.

Back to the oil. It seems that '#1' didn't change from earlier in his remarks, but '#2' has transformed a bit, and now 'vomit' (#3) has entered the picture.

The oil is, you know, so valuable for many reasons. It fueled ISIS, number one.

Number two, it helps the Kurds, because it’s basically been taken away from the Kurds. They were able to live with that oil.

And number three, it can help us because we should be able to take some also. And what I intend to do, perhaps, is make a deal with an Exxon Mobil or one of our great companies to go in there and do it properly...

The one the only ME

You know, these people are very smart. They’re not into the use of cellphones anymore.  They’re not - they’re very technically brilliant. You know, they use the Internet better than almost anybody in the world, perhaps other than Donald Trump. But they use the Internet incredibly well.

And, there was this.

If you read about the history of Donald Trump — I was a civilian.  I had absolutely nothing to do with going into Iraq, and I was totally against it. But I always used to say, “If they’re going to go in…” - nobody cared that much, but it got written about.  “If they’re going to go in…” - I’m sure you’ve heard the statement, because I made it more than any human being alive. “If they’re going into Iraq, keep the oil.”  They never did.  They never did.

There was more.

Now, I will secure the oil that happens to be in a certain part. But that’s tremendous money involved. I would love to - you know, the oil in - I mean, I’ll tell you a story. In Iraq - so they spent - President Bush went in. I strongly disagreed with it, even though it wasn’t my expertise at the time, but I had a - I have a very good instinct about things.  They went in and I said, “That’s a tremendous mistake.” And there were no weapons of mass destruction. It turned out I was right. I was right for other reasons, but it turned out, on top of everything else, they had no weapons of mass destruction, because that would be a reason to go in. But they had none.

But I heard recently that Iraq, over the last number of years, actually discriminates against America in oil leases. In other words, some oil companies from other countries, after all we’ve done, have an advantage Iraq for the oil. I said, “Keep the oil.  Give them what they need. Keep the oil.” Why should we - we go in, we lose thousands of lives, spend trillions of dollars, and our companies don’t even have an advantage in getting the oil leases. So I just tell you that story. That’s what I heard. 

And there was this.

And then I also wanted Hamza bin Laden because he’s a young man, around 30, looks just like his father.  Tall, very handsome.  And he was talking bad things, just like his father.

You know, if you read my book — there was a book just before the World Trade Center came down. And I don’t get any credit for this, but that’s okay.  I never do.  But here we are.  I wrote a book - a, really, very successful book. And in that book, about a year before the World Trade Center was blown up, I said, “There is somebody named Osama bin Laden. You better kill him or take him out.” Something to that effect. “He’s big trouble.”

Now, I wasn’t in government. I was building buildings and doing what I did. But I always found it fascinating. But I saw this man - tall, handsome, very charismatic - making horrible statements about wanting to destroy our country. And I’m writing a book. I think I wrote 12 books. All did very well. And I’m writing a book. The World Trade Center had not come down. I think it was about  - if you check, it was about a year before the World Trade Center came down. And I’m saying to people, “Take out Osama bin Laden,” that nobody ever heard of. Nobody ever heard of. I mean, al-Baghdadi everybody hears because he’s built this monster for a long time. But nobody ever heard of Osama bin Laden until, really, the World Trade Center.

But about a year - you’ll have to check - a year, year and a half before the World Trade Center came down, the book came out. I was talking about Osama bin Laden. I said, “You have to kill him. You have to take him out.” Nobody listened to me.

And to this day, I get people coming up to me, and they said, “You know what one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen about you? Is that you predicted that Osama bin Laden had to be killed before he knocked down the World Trade Center.” It’s true. Now, most of the press doesn’t want to write that, but you know  - but it is true. If you go back, look at my book. I think it was “The America We Deserve.” I made a prediction, and I -  let’s put it this way: If they would have listened to me, a lot of things would have been different. 

Good lord: A 900-word official statement, followed by 8,000 words of blood, guts, glory, and ego.

See you around campus. 

Sunday School 10/27/19

Today's classrooms were all abuzz with the announcement from the president that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed (well, committed suicide) last night during a raid in Idlib province in northwest Syria.

We'll get to that, but as always, I look first to see if any of the 2020 presidential candidates are making the rounds. Andrew Yang was supposed to have been on with Chuck Todd, but that's been postponed until next week, but Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar was on with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation. Let's look in.

They started the conversation with the takedown of al-Baghdadi, and Klobuchar was grateful for the  folks who "put themselves in danger" in the mission, and that it was a good decision to go after him. She reminded us, however, that this doesn't mean that ISIS is dead. First of all, there are 100 or so of them who escaped during Turkey's raid on the Kurds, and that it's unclear who's going to be guarding the ones who are still being held. And she noted that the Kurds helped with this, even though we left them "for slaughter."

Calling the raid a political win for the president, Brennan wondered, "Isn't this going to make it harder to run against him when he can say he's the guy who got Baghdadi?"

Look, I have in the past, for instance, when the president made the decision to respond to Assad's use of Sarin gas, I commended him for that decision. But just because you make some decisions for the security of this country doesn't - doesn't mean that his foreign policy overall hasn't been a disaster.  

Mentioning as examples of Trump's disastrous policies the decision to get out of the Iranian nuclear agreement, the Russian nuclear weapons agreement, and the climate change agreement, Klobuchar said those were "very bad decisions." Brennan asked if Klobuchar, "unlike other Democratic candidates," would pledge to keep the US military in Syria. The Senator would not have removed them, she would have kept them there. And now, she said, we have to use whatever leverage we have left to continue the fight against ISIS, for humanitarian aid, and to help the Kurds.

Next question: should the ISIS leaders be extradited here for prosecution? Yes, she said, we should go after them,

But the point of this is not really exactly what we're going to do now. The question is what do we do going forward when the American people have a decision to make? Do they want to keep a president in that has been so divisive in this moment - where this morning, we are unified behind getting rid of terrorists, that's for sure, but every morning, probably tomorrow and the next day he wakes up and he starts...dividing people... So I think the American people can come together say, "yes we want to defeat a terrorist," but then they look at what he does every single day to this country and they want new leadership.

They moved to education and paying for stuff like her plan for free two-year college and technical schools, which will cost $500B. She's focused on those issues specifically because "those are the fastest rising degrees right now in terms of number of jobs we're gonna have," citing a need for 74K electricians and similar numbers for plumbers, med techs, home care workers and so on.

Here's how she'd pay for it (and yes, she admitted, taxes are going to go up for folks making around $400K a year).

...by taking the capital gains rate, which (has) been a ripoff for average Americans, and changing that to the personal income rate. I have shown everything, Margaret, how I'm going to pay for it...I want to make college more affordable. Double the Pell Grants, and do this in a smart way, instead of paying for rich kids to go to college, which is sadly what my opponents' plans do. 

They shifted gears to impeachment, with Brennan questioning whether Klobuchar thinks the whistleblower should testify. It would be good, she said, but maybe not necessary, because people with first-hand knowledge are testifying.

I think what's most important, is to keep getting the testimony of people that were actually there on the scene. That Ambassador Taylor testimony was devastating. It showed that this was not just one phone call, that this had been a plan for a long time, for the president to put the interests of America behind his own personal interests to get dirt on an opponent. It's a pattern. He does it for his business. He does it for his partisan interests. He does it every single day.

And that's where they left it, as they were out of time.