Trump’s Iceberg Is Ahead

Aaron Blake writes at WaPo that Trump’s base is officially crumbling.

Trump assured us Monday that it was “stronger than ever.”

Then came more polls that drive home how untrue that is.

A CNN poll and an Investor’s Business Daily poll, both released late Monday, show somewhat different pictures of Trump’s overall approval. The CNN poll pegs it at 38 percent — around where it has been in other polling for a while — while the IBD poll shows it at a painfully low 32 percent. That’s the lowest of any high-quality poll in Trump’s entire presidency.

Investor’s Business Daily is a right-wing rag. If Trump has lost IBD … And note that FiveThirtyEight gives the IBD/TIPP poll an A- rating, which means it’s one of the more reliable polls.

These polls come on the heels of a Quinnipiac University poll last week that also showed Trump’s strong approval among Republicans dropping off. In that poll, just 53 percent of Republicans strongly approved of the president — down from a previous low of 62 percent.

Another common thread running through these polls is Trump’s decline among the working-class voters who were so key to his win in the 2016 election. The Q poll last week showed them disapproving of Trump more than they approved of him for the first time. The IBD poll shows Trump’s biggest decline coming among those making between $30,000 and $50,000 per year; 40 percent of this group approved of Trump last month, but it’s down to 27 percent today. Another of the biggest declines was among high school-educated voters, among whom Trump’s approval dropped by 11 points. The CNN poll shows Trump’s strong approval among whites without college degrees declining from 47 percent in February to 35 percent today. This is a group among which Trump beat Hillary Clinton more than 2-to-1.

Trump has not been looking good at FiveThirtyEight for awhile, either. The Gallup daily tracking poll has had Trump’s approval bouncing between 36 and 39 for the past month. The last time he was at 40 was July 9.

From Inspired Traveller at http://www.inspiredtraveller.in/trip-titanic-wreck-sleeping-darkness-100-years/

However, it’s possible Trump is not completely aware of how badly he’s doing in the polls. Matt Yglesias writes at Vox:

As Alex Thompson of Vice News, citing “three current and former White House officials,” reports: In the morning at 9:30 and then around 4:30 in the afternoon, Trump is presented with a briefing document full of people praising him.

The folders, according to Thompson, “are filled with screenshots of positive cable news chyrons (those lower-third headlines and crawls), admiring tweets, transcripts of fawning TV interviews, praise-filled news stories, and sometimes just pictures of Trump on TV looking powerful.”

The point of this is to improve the notoriously media-obsessed president’s mood by reminding him he has a lot of fans and admirers out there, and in a hilarious detail, reportedly some in the White House even refer to this clip package as “the Propaganda Document.” And, in a very bad way, it is.

A psychologically normal person in Trump’s situation would be keeping a watch out for icebergs, so to speak. But like the crew of the The Titanic, Trump assumes he is unsinkable and is unprepared for disaster.

Speaking of disaster, the New York Times just reported this a few minutes ago:

President Trump threatened on Tuesday to unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea if it endangers the United States as tensions with the isolated nuclear-armed state grow into perhaps the most serious foreign policy challenge yet in his young administration.

“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” Mr. Trump told reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. He has been very threatening beyond a normal state and as I said they will be met with fire and fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

Yeah, real smart, dude. Kim Jong-un will continue to make threats. What are you actually going to do?

10 thoughts on “Trump’s Iceberg Is Ahead

  1. Not that I’m looking forward to glowing in the dark (I’m an Angelenio, theoretically in range of DPRK nukes), but the Korean matter may actually be a good thing: war with North Korea has a real potential to threaten the lives of Congresscritters, and that should be enough to rouse them to ousting Twitler.

  2. Bannon doesn’t want any talk of ice(berg)s.
    With Mr. Ivanka always hovering around his boss, t-RUMPLE-THIN-sKKKin, he feels one Jew close to the POTUS is already one too many.
    (Yeah, I know that was a long reach for a very bad joke)!

    “Fire and fury?”
    Yeeeeeeesh!
    (Our ignorant jackass in the White House picked a fine time to remember his JHS English classas in alliteration!)
    Why do his handlers allow our leader with his tiny hands and a horrible hairdo(n’t) to insult North Korea’s leader with tiny hands and a horrible hairdo(n’t)?

    Can’t Gen. Kelly get one of the Russian mobsters who always seem to be near t-RUMP to sneak into the White House, break the POTUS’s fingers with a ballpeen hammer, then slam his jaw on the Oval Office desk – breaking it – and say the POTUS fell down a flight of stairs while sleepwalking (remember, t-RUMP is deathly afraid of stairs)?
    t-RUMP won’t be able to tell the real story – OBVIOUSLY.
    That should shut him the hell up for awhile.
    Oh, and then to keep him quiet, keep lightly breaking his fingers and jaw periodically, until he gets impeached, 25th “Amendmented” out of office, or lose the GOP Primaries in 2020.

    (I kid, Secret Service! I kid!!)

  3. Well, I find it to be a little engorging with all this fire and fury talk coming from our commander.. I just melt when he talks that way.

  4. If Trump was to be looking for icebergs he’d be looking for when Mueller’s investigation turns Trump Tower into NYC’s largest laundromat.

  5. For any of you people out there who are fluent in body language check out Trump’s body language when he made his fire and fury comment. He’s posed in the classical straight jacket pose. I think that as far as body language speak goes, there isn’t a more definitive statement of defensiveness and insecurity than what Trump is speaking.
    I’m beginning to think that reality in some small measure has penetrated his delusional world of having supreme power. I have to come back to the words of wisdom spoken by President Obama…”Reality has a way of asserting itself.”
    Another little thing I noticed, but don’t understand is, when Trump made his stupid fire and fury statement he concluded it with a reflexive “thank you” at the end. What is that all about? It could be a mechanism to end further dialog, but something in Trump’s delivery made it appear to me as if he was responding to an unspoken praise of his brilliance. Like a preemptive congratulatory response to a perceived approval of his comment.

  6. I’m not so sure that this (“trump’s base is crumbling”) is good news. The GOP will crown Pence ( = impeach Trump) as soon as they think they can do it without pissing off the Know-Nothing (populist/Trumpist) wing of their party. I’d rather see that postponed a year for two reasons: optimal turmoil in the GOP during the 2018 elections, and to give Pence less time as (shudder) President with GOP control of Senate and House.

    Vile as he is, Trump is an impediment to the real damage that the GOP wants to do.

    When it (impeachment) does happen, Republican “Moderates” and “Mavericks” will join Democrats in Impeaching Trump, but they will let/force the Democrats to lead the process, thereby deflecting the Know-Nothings’ hatred left-wards (again).

    The Know-Nothings get their “news” from Fox, right-bubble websites, and emails forwarded by their crazy old Aunties. Did Fox drive the downturn in Trump support? I should watch it more often, just to keep track of their propaganda, but I can’t stomach it.

  7. Breaking News:
    FBI served search warrant at home of ex-Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, his spokesman says

    Who’s going to be the first domino to fall?

  8. The situation hearkens to the MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) principle we had (and have) with Russia. Either of us could launch a successful first strike. The problem is that we can’t be prevent a punitive nuclear response. Trump might not be completely condemned by the world (or by me) if he told N. Korea that AFTER they launch a nuclear strike at the US, we will turn the populated portions of N. Korea into a radioactive parking lot. Operative work is AFTER – and there’s only one way we could prove the strike was nuclear.

    Some of you might not approve of the nuclear slaughter of millions of Koreans, but I don’t take lightly a successful nuclear strike against LA which killed a million immediately and condemned more to a slow death. Trump is dancing around a fact – we probably can’t prevent such a strike. When they will have the capability of a warhead small enough to tip a missile is guesswork.

    Here’s where Trump is stuck. In order to make a credible threat of a nuclear response to a nuclear attack, Trump has to concede that such a strike is possible and we might not – probably can’t – prevent it. The war pigs (of both parties) would declare that such a condition requires preemptive actions now. The only cheap, quick option is a nuclear strike. The world is aware the US made the first and only nuclear strike against civilians and they haven’t forgiven or forgotten. (Consider what global sanctions against the US might do.)

    I think the world will accept that a nuclear strike against US civilians will result in a nuclear response against population centers (civilians) intended to cripple N. Korea with such widespread destruction that no command & control structure would remain as a threat. That’s an opinion.

    N. Korea does not want and can not survive a nuclear exchange. N. Korea is trying to establish a nuclear protection racket. In NYC the racket was – pay us to ‘protect’ your business so no one will break your windows – the offer an obvious threat to break your windows if you don’t pay up. Now how much extortion can N. Korea extract when the threat is against entire cities?

    It’s time for the entire club of nuclear nation to make a pact – whoever uses nuclear weapons first will be annihilated by the surviving nuclear powers. Not sanctioned – not punished. Annihilated. That makes joining the club VERY dangerous, with very few advantages.

  9. Hopefully General Kelly will know what to do. And that he’s had significant psychology training…

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