“Cataclysmic falloff” is the term that Rick Wilson uses to describe the downhill journey of Donald Trump’s poll numbers. Each week there are new polls and over the past 100 days, the downward trend is unmistakeable. Wilson predicts that there is no coming back from these polls. (15% of young people think the country is going the right direction? That puts Trump in an interesting quandary: does he continue to push these insanely unpopular themes (firing Jerome Powell and then taking it back, being the most recent) and watch the stock market yo yo spastically, or does he attempt to actually stabilize his policies and do something sane and rational? And that’s granting arguendo that he is capable of being sane and rational. This is twelve minutes long but worth the time because it’s a terrific overview of where we are and how disillusioned America has become.
This reminds me of that old TV show, “Gomer Pyle” which some of you are old enough to remember. The drill sergeant would scream “I can’t hear you,” no matter how loud the troopers would call out what he wanted to hear. Trump is doing a reverse-Gomer. The polls are screaming out bad news but Trump wants to hear it as the good news he’s so desperate to hear. He’s demanding the polls tell him great numbers and then when they give him the actual numbers, he covers his ears with his hands and shrieks “I can’t hear you” because he can’t stand to hear the truth.
There’s a reason for that: history will record that the foremost problem with this misadministration is that Trump believed his own hype, that he would “win in a landslide.” That was not only his hype, that was the make believe reality world of his administration going in. Along with “landslide” (1.5%???) their other favorite fantasy word was “mandate.” Nobody before who has won that narrowly, or even by far greater percentages, has claimed either a landslide or a mandate. But this klown kar did.
And so we have seen what we have seen and will continue to see more of the same. Trump squeaked back in and rather than do what any sane person would have done under the same circumstances, which is thank his lucky stars and resolve to play it safe going forward, he’s gone on his mad revenge vendetta, which includes all of his enemies, real and imagined.
So far it’s not working out for him so well. At this point in his presidency, Trump is at the bottom of all presidents at the same point, bottoming even his first term. (And experience, one would have thought, would have prevented that from happening, right?)
I think it’s interesting that Rick Wilson pointed to The Apprentice and Trump’s fantasy persona as being the key factors behind MAGAmania. I never saw even one episode of that show and I didn’t know who Donald Trump was. But when I saw him come down the escalator and enter the race I knew exactly who and what I was looking at. And from that day to this I have never been wrong about his awfulness.
I missed the brainwashing years and so could assess the truth. Unhappily, so many Americans bought the hype. That is our collective American tragedy. Maybe the silver lining is that the next time some TV personality gets delusions of grandeur and wants to run for president, the spectre of Trump will be there to haunt us all.
There are at least two things indicating that Trump no longer cares about his popularity. He just denied FEMA aid to deep-red Arkansas, and is trying to shut down FEMA altogether. More tellingly, he is not holding rallies throughout the country to shore up his MAGA base, as he frequently did in his first term. We can only speculate on the reasons. Maybe his desire for retribution is stronger than his need to be liked ever was.
Is is good for us that he allows his poll numbers to keep sinking? It would seem so, but I worry that people’s growing unrest will give his regime an excuse to impose even more draconian measures. Scary times we live in.
Ursula, I really cannot believe that you lived through the 80s and had no idea who Drumpf was before his little “welcome to politics” entrance.
But, here’s something I think you might enjoy.