One should always be hestitant about jumping from poll to poll to gauge Donald Trump and MAGA’s viability, but after several comprehensive studies in a row showing Trump spiraling down from at least mid-September, and definitely throughout October, the latest releases showing Trump’s approval rating at an abysmal 38% overall approval rating and even lower rating on the economy deserve real analysis on what it means big picture, and perhaps that is why the hosts on Fox and Friends addressed the matter so… carefully? This morning. It appears that, while agreeing that Americans have an absolute right to be worried about the cost of goods, they don’t want it all put on Donald Trump, at least not yet.
This morning on the comfort couch, our erstwhile MAGA heads found themselves floating amidst political floatsom. From a report in Mediaite:
On Wednesday’s Fox & Friends, the hosts reported on a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, taken November 14-17, which showed Trump with a 34% approval on the economy while 58% disapprove of his handling of the economy. The survey carries a 3% margin of error.
Ainsley Earhardt argued that affordability has become a central issue for the administration, but argued policies like no tax on tips, as well as the president’s promised $2000 checks, could turn people’s feelings around soon.
Yeah. Well, Ainsley can talk about the fabulous news regarding the no-tax-on-tips thing all she wants, and according to Grok, only 2.5-4% of American workers will find it at all helpful, and perhaps 50% of them make too small a ratio as to even notice. Similarly, woe to any American who spends that $2,000 before it has arrived in the account itself, never mind in the mail. It won’t help much but that’s okay since it isn’t coming anyway. Might as well wait on a $20,000 check.
No problem, according to Earhardt’s colleague, Lawrence Jones, who said this is all just unfair, and we know how much “fairness” matters to Donald Trump (There has never been a man alive who talked more about what is unfair to him while never spending a second worrying about what is fair for him to do to others):
First of all, I’m not going to tell the American people how to feel because I think Joe Biden made that mistake of saying hey, you know, it’s transitory, you’re not feeling it. But it has only been nine months…. So I’m not saying, hold on a little bit, but I am saying, it’s kind of unfair, when someone has been there for nine months, to put it all on them.
Right. Because if we know one thing at all, it is that Donald Trump has beaten the bushes from coast to coast, doing all he can to cut the cost of living. So just give all that energy some time to turn around and make it work. Actually, one of Trump’s biggest problems right now is that he has done nothing to even fake concern for his average voter. Far more time has been spent ensuring that Elon and his buddies have an extra $200 billion that they otherwise wouldn’t have had.
(Tax everything over $100 million at 50%, force Elon and Bezos to get by on $225 billion.)
And leave it to Brian Kilmeade, annointed as the Dumbest Man on Television (“DMT” trademark pending), to sum up the stakes:
“Basically, the American people are going to decide when they go shopping, who’s got the better plan come midterms,” Brian Kilmeade added. “Everything’s on the line. It’s really whether the president’s going to have four packed years of successes or two and then a struggle in the next two if the Democrats get control of the House.”
Actually, DMT, voters will decide on whether to hold Trump back from burning the rest of the dump down. If he had two years of real successes for people, Trump wouldn’t be hovering at 34% approval ratings on the economy. And if you weren’t “DMT,” you would know this.
So Trump is in trouble such that none of this is really fair to him, after all, who could see the cost of Thanksgiving groceries becoming such a gripping political issue, other than everyone but the DMT? And it damn sure is worth noting.
For all the horrible times during Trump’s administrations, for all the obscene behavior, self-indulgent grabs, near misses, and scandals, exactly none of them occurred during a crumbling economy. The American people are, actually, quite fair to a fault and will give someone a ton of leeway when they have money in their pockets and things seem stable. But we are even fairer when we hold people accountable for shoveling money into the stratosphere while ignoring imminently foreseeable consequences on the ground to families that absolutely are struggling to afford the basics.
What comes around goes around.
And that’s trouble for Trump. It wouldn’t even take a scandal as jaw-dropping and sweeping as Epstein to take him down during an imploding economy. But as it turns out, that that is exactly the scandal at hand.
That seems fair.
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Like Rachel Maddow says “watch what they do, not what they say”. If Donold really wanted to send us $2,000 checks, it would have happened by now. Of course, his explanation for how to pay for it doesn’t hold water. They had and economist on NPR’s Newshour that said the tariffs so far have generated about $19 million and the cost of sending every citizen $2,000 would be $38 million. But also, he had no problem coughing up billions to send to Argentina. So much for America first. I think the whole point of saying he would send the checks was to make people be quiet about the cost of everything. Kind of like saying something will happen in 2 weeks, he’s counting on attention to turn to something else in the meantime.
Maybe Kilmeade should be asking himself why so many businesses are already holding “Black Friday” sales. A local retailer (Montgomery, AL) area had an ad on the radio announcing it was going to be starting its Black Friday sales this coming Monday (for those who, like the Fox “News” hosts, may be a bit calendar-challenged, Monday is the 24th and *official* Black Friday is the 28th). But, again, plenty of e-tailers and even brick-and-mortar retailers have been holding sales since the first of the month (oddly, I don’t recall anything like that LAST year even with all of Biden’s “massive inflation” and “out-of-control high prices”).
i heard bessent or someone say it would be around 150 million eligible recipients. at 2k esch that’s 300 billion dollars so yeah, no problem. let’s see how long they keep up this crap.