We now know enough to say that Trump is two weeks into another significant dip in his approval rating. In the first week his approval increase stalled by dropping .10%. In the second week there was a much steeper drop of 1.60%. If the dip ended today, a drop of 1.70% bottoming out at an approval rating of 40.3% would mean this episode has a score of 5 out of 10 relative to all previous Trump approval dips. He has not had a dip this sever since January 2018 (Episode 8 in my ranking system). And if you just look at amount of the decline (without factoring where he is bottoming out) he has not dropped this much since November-December 2017 (Episode 7).
Why is this happening now? These approval dip episodes almost always correspond to a convergence of multiple negative storylines. Here we have two or three: Manafort was found guilty of the charges Muller brought against him; Michael Cohen “flipped” on Trump to assist federal prosecutors; John McCain died and the country got to see how Trump responded to that. Usually these dips reverse themselves when Trump goes quiet and the negative news coverage subsides. We will see if that happens next week, or if Tump continues to exacerbate his problems.
Apparently , he can’t control his compulsion to tweet where he stick his foot in his mouth!