Pearl River The ship is sinking. There’s blood in the water. Soon they will be pulling the lifeboats out. In short, this is what the polling numbers from new surveys by both the Times and the Post are showing for the Trump push to autocracy. We can predict that the White House talking heads will say that this is all fake news from unfriendly sources, but they will, as always, have their fingers crossed behind their backs, because Republican pollsters are showing the same trends.
At 42% in the well-respected Times/Siena poll, Trump has managed a historic low for a president this early in what is normally the honeymoon portion of a new president’s term. Admittedly, despite Trump’s self-regard, his general popularity has never been too high, so no one, friend or foe, should suffer from “premature certainty”, but this can’t be good news. It also gets worse. 66% of voters find Trump’s first 100 days “chaotic,” while 59% think “scary” defines his administration at this point. The gyrations of the stock market and depression over the economy are “opposed by 55 percent of voters, including 63 percent of independents.” Historically, for no good reason, voters have seen Trump’s handling of the economy as a strength, but those days seem long gone.
On immigration, despite very low numbers coming into the US from the southern border, Trump’s deportation strategy and its way-across-the-line tactics have jumped the shark. His attempt to gaslight the public over the mistaken deportation of Abrego Garcia for no good reason to an El Salvador prison on the false claims of his dangerous gang affiliation haven’t worked, and his refusal to say “I’m sorry” and bring the guy back to his family and the US have turned the whole issue against him. As the Post reports,
More Americans say Abrego García should be returned to the United States than say he should remain in prison in El Salvador, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released Friday. Forty-two percent say Abrego García should be brought back, vs. 26 percent who say he should remain imprisoned abroad. There also are key partisan splits, with about three-quarters of Democrats saying Abrego García should be returned, compared with just over half of Republicans who agree with Trump that the Salvadoran man should remain in prison. Meanwhile, 31 percent of voters said they approved of Trump’s handling of the Abrego García case compared to 52 percent who said they disapproved of the president’s approach, according to a New York Times-Siena College poll….
God knows what kind of gang a two-year-old might have been part of in one of the latest deportation disasters. Trump likes to blink and pullback, while never admitting he and his people messed up, so its not like any of us should expect an apology, but maybe a report will come suddenly and soon, if the numbers keep trending this way, that Abrego Garcia is back in Maryland.
Trump can also see what’s happening to his co-president Elon Musk from all of this chaos and mischief. Tesla’s sales have dropped 71% in the last quarter. On an earnings call, reports indicate that, like it or not, Musk knows he better get back to the shop asap. No question that Trump is glad that Musk is taking the bullets for him, but he has gotten the message that he has to hide behind his weird cabinet picks, rather than Daddy Warbucks.
Meanwhile, he’s got a defense secretary who is embarrassingly unready for prime-time and proving it by one text after another. He has a health secretary who is bouncing from one crazy to another on measles, fluoride, and more. His buddy Russia’s Putin isn’t bending to his will, but kinda bending him over a chair, while Ukraine is no closer to peace than Gaza is, despite his pontificating.
Trump’s not the kind of captain that goes down with the ship, and the ship is clearly sinking, so the coming weeks might see a change before he goes underwater yet again.