Slouching Toward 100 Days
Trump's ugliness turns out to matter, after all.
“Optimism and hope are not the same. Optimism is the belief that the world is changing for the better; hope is the belief that, together, we can make the world better. Optimism is a passive virtue, hope an active one. It needs no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to hope.” — Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
I’ve spoken frequently about this distinction between hope and optimism. But I find it especially helpful these days. There are dark days ahead and things may not get any better for quite a long time. So, undiluted optimism seems naive, perhaps even delusional.
But we can still hope that, together, we can make the world better. And even amid the rolling chaos and slouch toward post-Constitutionalism, there’s reason to be a bit hopeful this weekend, because it turns out that some things do matter, after all.
So, as loath as I am to talk about polls, this seems a good day for a wrap-up of what we are seeing.
Happy Saturday. [Programming note: Subscribers will get the second part of my conversation with Adam Kinzinger tomorrow.]
Trump’s ugly numbers
Trust me, we are not chuffing hopium here. Trump’s numbers are gruesome, and they get worse the closer you look. Consider some of these numbers from the new NYT/Siena poll: Trump is underwater on all of these issues:
Immigration: -4
Managing the federal gov't: -8
Trade: -11
Economy: -12
Foreign conflicts: -14
War in Ukraine: -21
The Kilmar Abrego Garcia case: -21
You’ll recall that many of the smart kids told us that it was a mistake to focus on the rendition of the Maryland man to a gulag in El Salvador because immigration was Trump’s strong suit. But, as Aaron Blake notes, “The new NYT/Siena poll shows Kilmar Abrego Garcia is tied for Trump's worst issue.” The crosstabs show that independents disapprove of Trump’s handling of the Abrego Garcia case by a whopping margin of 59-23.
So, the cruelty, lawlessness, and slouch toward autocracy do, in fact, matter, after all. Who knew?
The NYT poll has Trump’s approval rating at an historically low 42 percent. But the details are revealing:
66% of voters describe Trump’s second term as “chaotic”
59% describe it as “scary”
76% rate the economy as fair or poor
47% think the economy is worse than it was last year
50% say Trump made the economy worse, only 21% say he has made it better
44% say Trump’s policies have hurt them personally
55% oppose Trump’s tariffs
“Taken together, the survey’s findings show that any second-term honeymoon for Mr. Trump is over. His approval rating among crucial independent voters is now at a woeful 29 percent.”
That poll is not an outlier. Consider…
“With President Donald Trump’s second term approaching its 100-day mark, 40% of Americans approve of how he’s handling the job – a decline of 7 percentage points from February.”
59% of Americans disapprove of the administration’s tariff increases, while 39% approve.
55% disapprove of the cuts the administration is making to federal departments and agencies, while 44% approve.
“A majority of Americans, 53 percent, disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, with 46 percent approving, a reversal from February when half of the public voiced approval of his approach. Negative views have ticked up across partisan groups over the past two months, with 90 percent of Democrats, 56 percent of independents and 11 percent of Republicans now disapproving of the way the president has managed one of his core policy issues.”
“Seven in 10 Americans think President Donald Trump's tariffs on international trade will drive up U.S. inflation, outweighing hopes that they'll boost manufacturing employment and fueling a 64% disapproval rate of how he's handling the issue.
Even nearly half of Republicans -- 47% in the ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released Friday -- said they think tariffs will negatively impact inflation. That jumps to 75% among independents, a swing group in national politics.”
“Just 37% of respondents to the six-day poll that concluded on Monday approve of Trump's handling of the economy, down from 42% in the hours after his January 20 inauguration, when he promised to supercharge the economy and bring about a "Golden Age of America."
Harvard Kennedy School survey of young adults:
“61% disapprove of Trump and 31% approve, while 42% think Trump will hurt their personal finances and 20% believe he’ll help, 9% said he’ll have no impact and 26% said they don’t know.
**
And all of this was before Trump’s FBI arrested a judge in Milwaukee… (See Andrew Weisman’s reaction here.)1
BUT, but, but…
Any irrational exuberance needs to be checked by the fact that Republican voters still overwhelmingly back Trump and there are few indications that congressional Republicans have grown weary of being potted plants.
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ICYMI: A Week of Commentary
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday dogs
We just got back from a breakfast run to McDonald’s.
First, the main allegation appears to be that the judge had a defendant in her courtroom and allowed him to leave through a side door instead of the main one. The DEA and FBI claim this made it harder for them to arrest him. However, according to the criminal complaint, agents saw the defendant outside the courtroom with his attorney, and later outside the courthouse, where they arrested him.
So, it’s not entirely clear that the judge’s actions were intended to help him evade law enforcement — especially since he was still visible and ultimately apprehended.
It’s very hard to look at this case and not see it as part of a broader assault on the judiciary, particularly as judges continue to stand up to actions taken by the administration.
There has been a violation here, but not by the judge — rather by Pam Bondi, the former Attorney General, and Kash Patel, the head of the FBI. Both have spoken publicly in ways that appear to violate longstanding DOJ rules. Kash Patel, for instance, tweeted denigrating remarks about the judge — a tweet he later deleted, presumably because someone at the FBI recognized it violated internal policies prohibiting public commentary on pending cases. Pam Bondi went on Fox News and essentially threatened judges, claiming they were out of control and would be prosecuted.
This is deeply concerning.
As for the charge against the judge, we’ll need to see more facts. But based on what’s known, it’s hard to imagine that anyone acting as an adult in the room thought this was a legally or factually sound move.
Who in the name of all that is holy are those 42% of people queried that find tRump 2.0 as "exciting"? What sort of "excitement" does this POS bring to those people? Sexual? Sado-masochistic? Greed? That, my friends, is really a puzzler.
Charlie,
This Regime (I no longer call it an administration) is lawless and pushing past a constitutional era faster than Hitler did in Germany. I wrote about Judge Learned Hand’s “I Am an American” speech at the swearing in of new citizens in New York’s Central Park on 22 May 1944. In it he said:
“I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it…”.
We cannot allow liberty to die in our hearts. The rest of my article is here: https://dundas.substack.com/p/if-liberty-dies-in-our-hearts-no
Thank you for all that you do. I won’t give up and I know that you won’t. Feel free to cross post anything that I publish here. I just need to figure out how to do it for other writers whose Substacks I subscribe to. All the best and watch your six. We all have targets on us now.
Steve Dundas