It's a stunning number.
A new Associated Press-NORC poll finds that 62 percent of Americans disapprove of what Donald Trump is doing, while 36 percent approve.
Thank of that.
An imponderable number – a little more than 100 million Americans, one in three of us – thinks this man is not a global embarrassment.
Assess your surroundings right now. Count to three. Determine what person might be the one-of-three this survey identifies. Then slowly back away.
Such people are free to believe what they want, but -- my goodness:
Could they possibly be OK with denying children soap at the border, while entertaining the purchase of Greenland?
Could they possibly see logic in cancelling a presidential trip to Denmark because its prime minister reacted the way any other head of state would to such ridiculousness?
Rest assured, the world as a whole does not see Donald Trump as "favorably" as Americans do. He is the most reviled American leader in history. No contest. Check any poll you want.
Consider his statement that Jews who vote Democratic are showing "great disloyalty," the next day refusing to walk back the intellectual insult he had hocked up.
Had such words come from any other U.S. public figure this side of Reps. Steve King and Louie Gohmert, they would be the most politically damning and damaging that person ever uttered.
The utterance came after Trump goaded Israel into putting two U.S. congresswomen on a string regarding an official visit. This from a nation that receives untold aid from our taxpayers.
Disgraceful.
And of course, there's Trump's "chosen one" statement about himself. He may be joking, but religious right mullahs like Jerry Falwell Jr. and Franklin Graham – not to mention David Duke of the Klan – are serious about it.
Now the Chosen One says he orders American businesses not to do business with China. We can assume Ivanka will not get the memo.
Away from the tweeting and the flapping of lips that are sorely in need of a restraint device, Trump consistently shows that he doesn't know what he says about matters that matter, like guns:
He has crossed the gun-sanity Rubicon over and over since the horrors of El Paso and Dayton, intimating he supports heightened background checks and then backing off after one ringy-dingy from the National Rifle Association.
With the economy looking as green around the gills as his own presidency, he doesn't want to show he knows it. He said he wasn't considering an election-year payroll tax cut before saying he was in fact considering pushing for it.
Let's hope it doesn't happen. Trump has always shot his wad in the tax-cut arena. The result is an increasingly stagnant economy and projections of a deficit that next year will exceed $1 trillion.
Yes, $1 trillion of a deficit that was actually declining in President Obama's second term, with a ravaged economy on the mend.
Do you imagine that frantically anti-debt tea party fundamentalists remain tightly packed in that one-third of Americans who remain in lust with Trump?
You can bet your yellow beehive "Don't Tread on Me" bumper sticker they are.
Now let us consider the plight of the Republicans, who polls show are still enamored with this man who has put a clown's nose on our nation's image.
The president blithely has predicted a "Jexodus" -- Jews fleeing the Democratic Party. That's more pink elephant fodder from him, particularly after the damage from his "disloyal" comments.
Indeed, the latter language harks, for many of the Jewish faith, to the rhetoric that led to pogroms, concentration camps and, in the age of Trump, lit tiki torches.
The actual, certifiable exodus is from Republican moderates in Congress and Trump voters in the swing states that made him king -- or at least so he thought.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment