A new Reuter/Ipsos poll is out:
President Donald Trump’s approval rating fell to 32% – the lowest of his political career – as his fellow Republicans soured on his handling of the cost of living amid the unpopular Iran war, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
The poll, completed on Sunday, was conducted over a four-day period that saw Trump throw three major news organizations out of the White House and muse that Washington’s iconic Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — named after slain President John F. Kennedy — could be torn down if Trump’s own name could not be added to it.
It found voters leaning away from supporting Trump’s fellow Republicans in the November 3 midterm elections that will determine control of Congress for the next two years. [Reuters]
The midterms will be a calamity for the Republicans if this continues and even deepens, and that may happen. The President appears to be unwilling, or unable, to move his focus to critical topics such as inflation, Trump’s War, foreign relations, etc.
Instead, he works on renovation of D.C. I think there’s two reasons for this.
First, folks under immense pressure often revert to doing what they think they do well. A former boss of mine has a story about the time one of my employers began to collapse. When the C-suite (CEO, etc) were kicked out, he and another fellow, whose primary experience was in testing, were moved up to develop a new product. The pressure was immense, and my former boss later reported that the other guy was spending all of his time … writing up test specs.
President Trump is certainly under a lot of pressure.
Second, it’s how Trump leaves his mark. There is little surprise here; the story of Trump proclaiming at Mt Vernon, George Washington’s plantation, that Washington blundered by not putting his name on everything, is well known. Trump wants fame and glory, and it’s become clear he’ll be getting notoriety and ingloriousness.
Trump seems to deal with disaster by threatening to destroy the world and then getting back to his branding work. As Belle of the Ranch noted this morning, he threatened to absolutely destroy Iran if they won’t make a deal.
Again.
But will he? No.
Oh, he might bang the table a little bit, but there’s a collection of reasons not to.
- Munitions. Munitions are running low.
- National opinion. Blow up Iran and his job approval rating will drop below 20%, I estimate. It’ll be another blow to his narcissism.
- World opinion. As much as Iran is considered evil, wise world leaders wanted to see it choked until its leaders were chased out rather than blown up. The reason is long-cited domino effect: once someone blows someone else up for whatever reason, even a plausible reason, then it becomes normalized. Foreign relations are hard enough without an opposing leader having a bad day and deciding to assuage it with a minor war.
- If you fail again, what do you do? There’s no good answer except resignation, and then he’d be a loser, a label he’s famously historically avoided.
Right wing pundit Erick Erickson will be disappointed that we’re not trying to eliminate Iranian leadership, but the JCPOA had the Iranian problem under control, and it was Trump who trashed it and started Trump’s War.
So we’re seeing the break between Trump, his backing billionaires, and his base of support growing larger and larger. Will it shatter before or after the midterms?
