Month: July 2018

Trump’s political power is still a mysterious force to many, and so it gets inflated in the partisan imagination. Liberals think it’s horrifying that half the country loves Trump and will follow him wherever he leads (only 26% strongly approve of the job Trump is doing). Trump supporters think it’s too bad that half the country hates him (only 41% strongly disapprove of Trump),  but they probably do not think too much about his unpopularity and the reasons for it.

Because the laws of political gravity did not seem to apply to Trump in 2016, there is a tendency to reject the voices that say they will apply to him in 2018. The presidential job approval number is a measure of political gravity, and by now we can draw some conclusions. I wanted to understand and quantify why Trump’s approval declines when it does. If you are a Trump critic, consuming a news and internet diet where everything Trump does gets dialed to 100 on the Rage’o’Meter, it’s useful to know what presidential actions and issues actually register disapproval among the broader public. If you are a Trump supporter, it’s good to know what doesn’t work politically so your preferred candidates can shape a strategy that will continue to win arguments and elections.

What follows is how I measured and quantified the periods of Trump’s presidency where he lost public support for the job he is doing.

• Policy actions or discussion (Obamacare Repeal, tax bill, travel ban, etc)
• White House chaos stories (staff infighting, spats, flubbed events, staff firings, etc)
• Trump Taboos (Charlottesville, Stormy Daniels, Roy Moore, etc)
• Russia investigation (Comey firing; Mueller indictments and guilty pleas, etc)

• Policy: House approves Obamacare repeal; Travel Ban blocked by courts; Trump withdraws form Paris Climate Accord
• Russia Investigation: Trump fires Comey; meets with Russians in Oval Office; Continuing fallout over Comey and Russia meeting; Mueller appointed; News about Kushner’s request for back channel with Russia; Comey testifies before Congress about his firing.

• Policy: SCOTUS reinstates travel ban; Trump announces transgender military ban; McCain sinks Obamacare repeal.
• White House Chaos: Scaramucci hired; Spicer resigns; Prebius replaced by Kelly; Scaramucci fired.
• Russia Investigation: First Trump-Putin meeting; a follow up dinner meeting without Americans present; News breaks about Manafort/Kushner Trump Tower meeting; Kushner testifies before Congress, denies collusion

On Monday night, Trump nominated Bret Kavanaugh to replace Kennedy on the Supreme Court.

This despite the fact that McConnell had quietly urged the White House against picking him because his extensive paper trail may make confirmation more difficult.

At the NATO summit Trump attacked NATO and Germany in particular; he also suggested that NATO countries should increase their contribution from 2% to 4%.

Trump went from the NATO summit to visit England. He gave an interview in the Sun tabloid where he criticized May for her handling of Brexit, that he told her how to handle it but that she did not follow his advice. This after Boris Johnson resigned on Monday over disagreements about a “soft” Brexit policy May is perusing.

Kushner’s security clearance: “when White House security officials granted him a permanent clearance in late May, he was granted only “top secret” status — a level that does not allow him to see some of the country’s most closely guarded intelligence.”

Child Separation 

As of July 12, Department of Homeland Security says they have 103 children under five who have been separated; 57 have been reunited; 46 have not been reunited; 12 cannot be reunited because the adults have already been deported; 1 cannot be reunited because the parent cannot be found.

Russia Investigation

The White House ordered the FBI to release classified information about the informant the FBI used to contact members of the Trump campaign, Stefan Halper, to all members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Many intelligence officials including Wray and Coates opposed the expansion of access.

On Thursday Peter Strozk testified before the House Intelligence Committee. He gave a robust defense of FBI protocols and integrity, and explained in detail how and why it would have been impossible for his or anyone’s personal political views to shape the Clinton or Trump-Russia investigations: “At every step, at every investigative decision, there were multiple layers of people above me, assistant director, deputy director, director of the F.B.I., and multiple layers of people below me, section chiefs, unit chiefs and analysts, all of whom were involved in all of these decisions. They would not tolerate any improper behavior in me any more than I would tolerate it in them.” The hearing devolved into a circus when several members of the conservative caucus over-reached in their attacks.

On Friday morning Rosenstein announced the next set of indictments in the Mueller investigation. It names 12 Russian GRU officers responsible for stealing Democratic documents through hacking. Read the indictment here. In contains vast amounts of forensic detail, which Mark Warner said was mostly new information to him and the Senate intelligence committee. This suggests that the Mueller investigation is the only one with the capabilities to provide a complete summary of what happened in 2016.    

This was seen as a major step forward in the investigation, one that brings the walls in closer around Trump. By making the legal case that a major theft happened, it sets up the potential next round of incidents of Americans citizens (and Trump campaign officials) who used those stollen goods.

Jonathan Chait writes another one of these Trump-Russia recaps wherein he connects certain dots to remind us that there may be a much wider conspiracy here, dating back to the late 1980s. The most vivid detail is the reminder of the pinging off a server between Trump Tower and Russian Alpha bank, which was reported on during the summer of 2016. Will it turn out to be verifiable collusion? Only time–and Mueller–will tell.

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Trump’s Job Approval: 42%

Trump rescinded seven guidelines for how colleges should apply affirmative action in college applications. These do not have the force of law but are a statement of the official views of the government.

The Washington Post published an analysis of immigration visas that allow people abroad to move permanently to the United States with the intention of obtaining citizenship: -“The number of people receiving visas to move permanently to the United States is on pace to drop 12 percent in President Trump’s first two years in office” -Visas from Muslim-Majority countires have decreased 29% -Family migration applicants are “facing arbitrary questions that are really difficult for them to answer, and then they’re getting denials for things that attorneys have never seen before,-Refugee arricals set to fall 75% from 2016 levels.

The New York Times declared: “A trade war between the world’s two largest economies officially began on Friday morning as the Trump administration followed through with its threat to impose tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese products, a significant escalation of a fight that could hurt companies and consumers in both the United States and China.”

Scott Pruitt resigned after mounting evidence of corrupt practices.

On Saturday Pompeo met with officials in North Korea to advance the negotiations that began with Trump’s summit. It did not go well. He was seeking a declared list of weapons and nuclear sites, and a timetable for denuclearization. Kim did not meet with him, and the official statement afterward accused him of “gangster-like” demands.

Family Separation 

On Friday the Trump Administration asked for more time to reunite immigrant families before the judges deadline. The judge did not give an extension but “he gave the government until Saturday evening to come up with a list naming all 101 of the youngest children, along with an explanation of why it would be impossible to promptly restore them to a parent”

Russia Investigation

Trump’s lawyers are placing greater preconditions to a Mueller interview, namely: “that he has evidence that Mr. Trump committed a crime and that his testimony is essential to completing the investigation.”

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Trump’s Job Approval: 42.2%

The Supreme Court upheld Trump’s travel ban from mostly Muslim countries. It was a 5-4 decision with all of the conservatives siding with Trump. John Roberts wrote that the presidency has vast powers to control immigration, and that a president’s words on the subject could not be used to affect a legal decision that would bind future presidents, meaning Trump’s anti-Muslim statements could not invalidate the travel ban.

On page 29 of the opinion Roberts quotes several presidents who made statements about religious tolerance, especially toward Muslims. Roberts then writes: “Yet in cannot be denied that the Federal Government and the Presidents who have carried its laws into effect–from the Nation’s earliest days–performed unevenly in living up to those inspiring words.”

Justice Kennedy announced his retirement on Wednesday. Within hours people from the left and the right were predicting that the new court will overturn Roe v. Wade.

Child-Separation 

As of this week the Department of Health and Human Services is holding 2,047 separated children, six fewer than last week.

The Justice System wheeled into action on Tuesday: “A federal judge in California issued a nationwide injunction late Tuesday temporarily stopping the Trump administration from separating children from their parents at the border and ordered that all families already separated be reunited within 30 days.”

Customs and Border Protection announced that they would end zero-tolerance policy for adults with children, meaning they will be released pending their hearing. Officials say this is only temporary.

Here is Vox’s Dara Lind on how the travel ban became normalized. The first two versions of the ban were struck down in lower courts, and only the third version was upheld: “The current version is as close to court-proof as a policy signed by the man who once called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” could possibly get. While that means it’s likely to stay in place, it also represents a victory for the ban’s opponents. The courts (perhaps inspired by the resistance in the streets) forced the administration to keep its ambitions within the scope of what was legally permissible, and the administration complied. The system worked.”

Children as young as three years old are having to go without their parents into their own asylum/deportation hearings.

Sessions is drafting a regulation that will make it much harder to request asylum.

In what may a sign of things to come, Harley-Davidson says it is moving some jobs and production oversees to avoid Trump’s tariffs.

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Trump’s Job Approval: 41.80%