The MSM had better watch out, or Trump will be getting sympathy
Yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine who’s a political moderate and who wondered whether I was starting to feel sympathy for Trump.
“No, not at all!” I protested. “I’ve never felt any sympathy for him, and he doesn’t ask for it. If anybody can fight his own battles, it’s Trump.”
And yet, as day after day goes by and I see the constant barrage of negative spin on everything the man says and does, I’ve begun to think that in addition to my weariness with the attacks, I’ll come to feel a certain amount of sympathy. And I can’t possibly be alone in this.
Take this rather subtle version, which I just read. It quotes Charles Krauthammer:
Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer says President-elect Donald Trump has already lost any goodwill following his White House win.
“The shortest honeymoon on record is officially over,” he wrote in Thursday’s edition of his column.
“Normally, newly elected presidents enjoy a wave of goodwill that allows them to fly high at least through their first 100 days. Donald Trump has not been sworn in, and the honeymoon has already come and gone.”
It’s that word “lost” that’s so clever of the writers. Such a little word, isn’t it? But so meaningful. How can something be “lost” that never existed? How can something be “lost” that never had a chance of existing?
The Hill article then goes on to quote Krauthammer talking about Trump’s flaws, as well as the fact that, as Krauthammer writes, Democrats have been “pushing one line after another to delegitimize the election.” But the impression is that Trump initially had a chance to have a honeymoon, both with the people and the press, and that he has squandered it.
In service of that argument, Krauthammer cites polls:
The result is quantifiable. A Quinnipiac poll from November 17 through 20 ”” the quiet, hope-and-change phase ”” showed a decided bump in Trump’s popularity and in general national optimism. It didn’t last long. In the latest Quinnipiac poll, the numbers have essentially returned to Trump’s (historically dismal) pre-election levels.
The Hill echoes with some more poll evidence:
A Gallup poll released Friday found Trump has the lowest recorded approval rating of any president in the final days before first entering office.
Fifty-one percent of Americans disapprove of Trump before his Jan. 20 inauguration, while only 44 percent approve of him.
That last bit caught my eye, and made me think only 51%? I thought his disapproval was much higher than that.
And indeed it was, for most of the campaign season.
Fortunately, RealClearPolitics still has (as of this writing, anyway), a list of old polls that can be found here. If you scroll down there, you can see that in a poll from late last February (2/26-3/3)taken by Gallup, Trump’s disapproval was 63%. In May (5/1-5/22) Gallup had him at 60% disappoval, and in 6/13-6/19 at 64%. In July it was 59%, in three separate August polls it ranged from 63 to 61, and in September there were three polls with the same exact range. In October, 65, 66, and 62. And then in a poll taken in the days right after the November election, Trump’s disapproval scooted way down (that’s sarcasm, by the way) to 55. His approval ratings during all that time had usually been around 33 or so, climbing to 42 only in that same immediate post-election poll.
The most recent Gallup poll isn’t in that RCP link (at least, I can’t find it). But it’s cited in article after article in the press. I won’t bother to link to them all, but there are plenty of them (here’s a typical one), and they all describe it as the lowest ever for a president at the beginning of his term.
Interestingly, most don’t give a link to the poll, but here it is. You can see that the disapproval/approval is 51/44, and a month ago it was 48/48. Way way down in the results (which are only a summary), the margin of error is stated to be plus or minus 4. So whatever change has occurred in the last month is within the margin of error, although no one points that out that I’ve seen.
More importantly, to my way of thinking—and outside the margin of error—is the large improvement in Trump’s pre- vs. post-election ratings, involving both the lowering of his disapproval by more than 10 points and the raising of his approval by a similar margin. My guess is that this represents mostly an approval increase among conservatives and moderates.
As for those Quinnipiac polls cited by Kauthammer, they’re pretty interesting, too. He wrote that the latest Quinnipiac poll shows Trump’s disapproval “numbers have essentially returned to Trump’s (historically dismal) pre-election levels,” after a bump in the November 17-20 poll. Again, however, there’s no link to those polls. But if you go to that RCP page, you’ll see that the most recent Quninnipiac poll was taken on 1/5-1/9 and showed a disapproval/approval spread of 51/37. That’s somewhat of an outlier in that its approval rating is quite a bit lower than in the other polls taken at the same time, but its disapproval rating is similar to that found in other polls, including the Gallup poll already discussed.
So, what of that November 17-20 bump? Again, if you look at the chart and compare that November Quinnipiac poll to other polls taken at pretty much the same time, you will see that the Nov. 17-20 poll (which showed 46 disapproval and 44 approval) was the most Trump-favorable poll of all, with the others varying quite a bit from each other, but all of them finding a disapproval rating of 52 or more, which is similar to Trump’s disapproval rating of 51 in the most recent Quinnipiac poll.
So as far as I can see, this squandered-bump theory appears to be wrong.
And what about Trump’s disapproval ratings returning to his “(historically dismal) pre-election levels”? Nope. Not one poll I could find had a pre-election disapproval level of 51% for Trump—not Quinnipiac and not anyone else. Again, that RCP chart is informative, and if you bother to do what I did (I went back to December of 2015, checking all the disapproval ratings from then to the election, which took place almost a year later) you can see that the pre-election polls agreed that Trump’s disapproval was in the high 50s and the 60s, with nothing at 51 prior to the election. And that includes Quinnipiac.
So one can only conclude that Trump’s disapproval ratings have fallen since the election, and his approval ratings have gotten higher. That’s pretty much across the board, in all the polls. The small fluctuations and variations appear to represent mere noise and not to be consistent or meaningful.
You may think I’ve spent way too much time dealing with these numbers. You may be right. Who cares about polls?
Well, lots of people. And—to return to the original point of this post—pundits use them to create an impression of something and to describe and document a supposed phenomenon. They rely on people not going back themselves to check the work they’ve done. And most people won’t—because, let me tell you, it’s tedious work to do.
It may even be tedious to read. For that, I apologize. But this sort of distortion gets my goat, and is extremely frequent. On both sides, let me add.
And it might even get me to feel sympathy for Trump.
IMO (and certainly “in my eyes”), this is the most balanced column you’ve written on Trump, neo. Good reporting. Great analysis. Good work.
Kudos.
…not that you need my approval lol.
brdavis9:
I’m a glutton for approval. 🙂
I’m willing to give Krauthammer a bit of leeway on his statement. Although he was wrong about the absolute poll figures ala the approval/disapproval ratings, he was not wrong about the lack of a honeymoon. Most every President gets a three month period in which the press and most people (far right or left partisans excepted) will give the new President a period of acceptance. Since the election we have seen people protesting in the streets, people threatening the members of the electoral college, attempts to disrupt the certification of the electoral votes, continued attempts to delegitimize the election (Russian ties/possible blackmail by Russians.), threats against organizations that will perform at the inauguration, and plans to disrupt the inauguration itself.
What I am seeing among my friends who are ardent Trump supporters is a hardening of their hearts toward any who might question Trump. The activist anti-Trump progs are playing with dynamite. Many Trump supporters are ready, willing, and able to escalate things should they feel it necessary. I’m worried about violence like we saw the late 60s and early 70s. Only this time instead of Commies and black power advocates against the establishment, it will be left against right – a much bigger and more combustible bonfire if it comes.
It would be a good move for both the MSM and Trump to tone things down and call for a normal transition of power. IMO, it’s not going to happen. The MSM/progressives feel that their power is waning and they can only get it back by taking Trump down. And Trump is not going down without a fight. At this point in time, I’m worried about where this is all headed.
This actually rises another question: what is approval/disapproval rating of MSM? Is it worse than that of Trump and how did it changed recently?
The far left seems determined to disrupt the inauguration and we should expect violent protests. If Trump appears ‘oresidential’ during the event he will earn some sympathy, How much is unknown, but some sympathy seems likely to me. The few liberals that I know well will find any show of violence distasteful.
A strange thing happens again and again in mud-slinging match between Trump and his opponents: nothing sticks to him, but bounces and sticks to his detractors. Some magic trick, or just his air of righteous indignation, his fixed attitude, is enough to mesmerize everybody to this effect?
Oops, presidential.
J.J., I agree. As I wrote in my last post elsewhere on this site, I see that the media and the vocal left has essentially declared a death match against Trump. Having gone this far, they can’t back down (“Oh, never mind everyone, Trump isn’t so bad after all…”) so the only choice is going forward with escalating bombardment. The problem is, Trump was already so outrageous that the usual stuff they might have thrown at him was a big yawn – they have to reach for ever-more-ridiculous attacks because they’ve already used up everything that was in the realm of arguable reality. Essentially, they either have to find something, somewhere, that causes a significant wound, or they’re going to lose this media battle that they pretty much fully instigated.
While the most dedicated lefties are still out there screaming the same old stuff and eagerly accepting the tabloid-caliber Rumor of the Day as god-given truth, I’m starting to sense a certain level of dismay and silence where there used to be lefty noise. (And yes, perhaps even a tiny bit of sympathy from those of us who had to vote for Trump even though we didn’t really want to.) The MSM is dangerously close to entering National Enquirer territory and many people are starting to realize it and squirm. They’ve left responsible journalism light years behind what they’re doing, and people with any amount of decency or sense of right and wrong see what’s going on as wrong.
That said, I’m worried too about where this ends. There’s a lot of crazy over there, and they’ve proved over and over that they don’t think people who disagree with them have basic rights or are even fully human. I think they can justify a lot of violence, depravity, destruction and chaos if it’s done in the name of their causes.
“Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer says President-elect Donald Trump has already lost any goodwill following his White House win.”
Trump did not ‘lose’ any goodwill. It was stolen from him by the media. Trump’s actions have been if anything, reassuring. His approval rating would be much higher were the media not engaged in a campaign of assassination.
People of good will should take heart from Trump’s Cabinet nominees, an able bunch indeed. Naming Chao shows he can play the political game. I wish he had a hold on Ryan. But it is like being a snake-handler.
It is the Left that has a historical edge on turning to violence. A number of my friends, conservatives all, have said, “Let it come.” They are all armed and are totally fed up with the Left and its media. Many have abandoned their TVs altogether.
I have some liberal acquaintances, but they are not friends; there’s the difference!
Neo, your attention to detail is why you are the king of the blogosphere.
Thank you.
Keep on!
“It would be a good move for both the MSM and Trump to tone things down and call for a normal transition of power. IMO, it’s not going to happen. The MSM/progressives feel that their power is waning and they can only get it back by taking Trump down. And Trump is not going down without a fight. At this point in time, I’m worried about where this is all headed.”
Agree.
An old saying might be applicable: “Live by the sword, die by the sword”
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Just to name two issues, where trump has campaigned like no other GOP candidate:
He had been recorded on just about any side of an issue one can be – mutable – something we discussed in great detail here.
Neither did trump give his opponents much leeway in the lead up to the convention with outlandish claims such as Cruz’s father was somehow linked to the JFK shooting.
Maybe it is my “youth”, but I don’t recall any GOP POTUS candidate who ever campaigned on such extravagant / preposterous claims in my lifetime, and who made disagreements into overboard personal feuds.
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Now that he is elected, should we expect the msm and the left to suddenly treat him like all the rest?
Huh?
Is that even close to reasonable?
It may be what I wish for, but hardly what I was expecting given how 2016 unfolded.
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trump never really had any goodwill.
Why?
Because it is a form of trust, and, like trust itself, it is something to be earned.
Any modicum of “goodwill” trump may have had on Nov 9, it was as “stolen” from him as was the election “stolen” from clinton – which is to say, not at all.
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I only hope the GOP use this as an opportunity to quickly enact conservative policies to massively reduce the leviathan.
If trump turns out to be better than expected, it is probably less to do with himself than to do with the GOP dominance in Congress and some reasonable heads between there and within his cabinet who know how to work around trump.
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And, yes, the msm and the left do damage to themselves every time they over react and over play their hand.
Not unlike the damage that calls for obama’s birth certificate (and keeping that issue alive well beyond when it was a reasonable question), and the push to shut down the government without getting the public on board first, have had for the GOP in non-GOP eyes.
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Welcome to the world where truth is merely what one wants to believe it is, and cheering a candidate simply because he “fights” with those we disagree with, without any concern for what he actually fights for, nor for the acceptability with how he fights.
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Despite some glimmer of hope with some of his cabinet picks, if the stars don’t align, this “juvenile” fighting will not end well.
But, we’ll see!
I hope my NeverTrump bona fides are intact here.
But I am so angered by all these bogus attacks on Trump, I will by god vote for Trump in 2020 if that’s the hand I’m dealt.
I like the theory Trump himself has been shocked by all the vicious attacks from the left and that’s why his cabinet choices have been so conservative.
Trump’s approval rating has slipped for the seventh straight week, down to 72% from last week’s 69%
In other news, Big Brother has increased the chocolate ration to 20 grams.
President-elect Trump is not getting any sympathy from me; he is not a sympathetic figure. Nor does he need sympathy; and probably doesn’t want it.
What he is getting is an increasing sense of solidarity. I am coming to despise the media, and the Democrat politicians and operatives who are trying desperately to delegitimize our political process.
These people, who are so enjoying themselves at the moment, need to get it out of their systems quickly and then let the new Administration govern. If not they may damage the country irrevocably. This is a bigger issue than Trump. They seem to think that those who revere the constitution and respect the electoral process will have infinite patience. I think they are wrong. They speak boldly of taking to the streets, and acts of passive resistance. They could face more than they bargained for. The streets are ours as well.
neo – I came back over to peruse and see if things have ‘improved’. If balance had come back. I am sure you think so but this Texas boy thinks not. You still quote the tools of The Prog Left, The Deep State and the #NeverTrumpHumpBrigade – Krauthammer, the shills at RedState, etc.
Just remember what got PEOTUS Trump where he is – the opprobrium of the aforementioned groups for the Vast Right Wing Conspirators, The Whacko-Birds (McSame neo-con war monger), The Basket of Deplorables, The Bitter Clingers – all of us out in the heartland – flyover country. The absolute disdain and derision for the people who grow your food, refine your oil, build your vehicles, etc.
We know the Coastal Elite hate us. Guess what?
Rich Lowry, editor of National Review and a contributing editor with Politico Magazine (How’s that for having a foot in both camps?) makes much the same point, although he does not come to praise Caesar at all:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/why-the-media-lose-to-trump-214624
“For all that Trump complains about negative press coverage, he wants to be locked in a relationship of mutual antagonism with the media. It behooves those journalists who aren’t partisans and reflexive Trump haters to avoid getting caught up in this dynamic. If they genuinely want to be public-spirited checks on Trump, they shouldn’t be more bitterly adversarial, but more responsible and fair.
This means taking a deep breath and not treating every Trump tweet as a major news story. It means covering Trump more as a “normal” president rather than as a constant clear and present danger to the republic. It means going out of the way to focus on substance rather than the controversy of the hour (while Trump did a fine job shaming reporters at his news conference, he was notably weak on the details on how he wants to replace Obamacare). It means a dose of modesty about how the media has lost the public’s trust, in part because of its bias and self-importance.
None of this is a particularly tall order. Yet it’s unlikely to happen, even if it was encouraging that so many reporters opposed BuzzFeed’s decision. The press and Trump will continue to be at war, although only one party to the hostilities truly knows what he is doing, and it shows.”
Oldflyer,
I have despised the msm, most, but certainly not all, democrat politicians, and our ‘intelligentsia’ overlords since Reagan was POTUS. Glad to hear you have joined me. 😉
@huxley – one key area (of a handful) in which trump would earn my support in 2020 is IF he and his admin prove effective in enacting major conservative legislation, massively reducing the size and scope of government.
Until then, I remain hopeful given some of his cabinet picks so far, and other indicators.
Ultimately, though, trump does not get a bye just because the left are targeting him as a “conservative” like they always have, especially given the kind of campaign he ran.
Many love trump’s trolling nature. I do not, as it distracts from real issues, and provokes the worst response from the left.
Sooner or later, the left and the msm will learn how to deal with that – to trump’s detriment (and the GOP’s, however much gets to rub off on them).
Some might say he created this bed that he must now lie in.
As such, he gets little sympathy from this person.
maybe.. but it sure seems that the issue is asymetrical… if both sides do the same thing the response should be similar. but its not. whats for the cause is ok, what isnt is bad.
[note that i just read people from oberlin college argue that politically correct speech was started by the right in the 80s and 90s so as to undo the freedom of speech wins of the protestors in the 1970s… funny, but i actually quoted foucoult, and others from the 1920s stalin era, but i doubt they will realize how bad. but note, in a few years, pc speech will be blamed on the not left]
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446
Donald Trump wasn’t the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country.
Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.
A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.
The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.
Politico’s investigation found evidence of Ukrainian government involvement in the race that appears to strain diplomatic protocol dictating that governments refrain from engaging in one another’s elections.
The Ukrainian antipathy for Trump’s team – and alignment with Clinton’s – can be traced back to late 2013. That’s when the country’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Manafort had been advising, abruptly backed out of a European Union pact linked to anti-corruption reforms. Instead, Yanukovych entered into a multibillion-dollar bailout agreement with Russia, sparking protests across Ukraine and prompting Yanukovych to flee the country to Russia under Putin’s protection.
In the ensuing crisis, Russian troops moved into the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, and Manafort dropped off the radar.
Manafort’s work for Yanukovych caught the attention of a veteran Democratic operative named Alexandra Chalupa, who had worked in the White House Office of Public Liaison during the Clinton administration. Chalupa went on to work as a staffer, then as a consultant, for Democratic National Committee. The DNC paid her $412,000 from 2004 to June 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records, though she also was paid by other clients during that time, including Democratic campaigns and the DNC’s arm for engaging expatriate Democrats around the world.
She said she shared her concern with Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., Valeriy Chaly, and one of his top aides, Oksana Shulyar, during a March 2016 meeting at the Ukrainian Embassy. According to someone briefed on the meeting, Chaly said that Manafort was very much on his radar, but that he wasn’t particularly concerned about the operative’s ties to Trump since he didn’t believe Trump stood much of a chance of winning the GOP nomination, let alone the presidency.
Chalupa said the embassy also worked directly with reporters researching Trump, Manafort and Russia to point them in the right directions. She added, though, “they were being very protective and not speaking to the press as much as they should have. I think they were being careful because their situation was that they had to be very, very careful because they could not pick sides. It’s a political issue, and they didn’t want to get involved politically because they couldn’t.”
Shulyar vehemently denied working with reporters or with Chalupa on anything related to Trump or Manafort, explaining “we were stormed by many reporters to comment on this subject, but our clear and adamant position was not to give any comment [and] not to interfere into the campaign affairs.”
Shulyar said her work with Chalupa “didn’t involve the campaign,” and she specifically stressed that “We have never worked to research and disseminate damaging information about Donald Trump and Paul Manafort.”
But Andrii Telizhenko, who worked as a political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy under Shulyar, said she instructed him to help Chalupa research connections between Trump, Manafort and Russia. “Oksana said that if I had any information, or knew other people who did, then I should contact Chalupa,” recalled Telizhenko, who is now a political consultant in Kiev. “They were coordinating an investigation with the Hillary team on Paul Manafort with Alexandra Chalupa,” he said, adding “Oksana was keeping it all quiet,” but “the embassy worked very closely with” Chalupa.
In fact, sources familiar with the effort say that Shulyar specifically called Telizhenko into a meeting with Chalupa to provide an update on an American media outlet’s ongoing investigation into Manafort.
Telizhenko recalled that Chalupa told him and Shulyar that, “If we can get enough information on Paul [Manafort] or Trump’s involvement with Russia, she can get a hearing in Congress by September.”
Big Maq: I still have my concerns about Trump but it seems he has made some good cabinet picks and not done anything too outrageous.
Though I have been out of the country/sick/dealing with holidays and not followed him too closely.
I was bothered by the naked sliminess of the Fake Dossier story — especially given all the hoohah about Fake News.
Trump is indeed a different animal. The Left is no doubt banking on the idea that they can pretend he is completely unqualified for office. If the entire left gives him the cold shoulder, maybe the American people will assume he must be bad. This, of course, has an enormous potential to backfire. If people sense the left are simply doing this as sour grapes then it actually delegitimizes them, not Trump.
The left need to learn the Trump is not a politician like most Republican candidates. He isn’t concerned with conceeding political territory in order to curry favor and advance a political agenda. He can’t be cowed into submission. He’s not interested in the 100-year plan to popularize his party. Rather the opposite: he’s a corporate profiteer. He’ll deal with anyone who will give him more of what he wants, and anyone who gets in his way is an obstacle to be removed.
The left need to look at Trump like a business partner, not a begging politician.
even eugenics is back!!
Dr. Paul Ehrlich, author of the 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb is scheduled to speak in Vatican City during the February 27-March 1 conference that will discuss “how to save the natural world.” The Stanford biologist champions sex-selective abortion as well as mass forced sterilization as legitimate methods to curb population growth.
In his 1968 book, Ehrlich went so far as to defend forced abortion, writing: “Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”
@huxley – had trump not played a very similar game, I’d be there with you.
It is disgusting that anyone does this, but it is hard to get upset at those in the media who do this and then simultaneously give trump the benefit of the doubt for his first 100 days.
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2016 was an awful election, where folks thought they could only make one of two bad choices. So be it. It is destructive to carry on being upset about the results.
We’ve had a large part of a year to absorb that. The left hasn’t.
Not an excuse, but just an observation.
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If trump were to turn a new leaf and actually “… be so presidential, (we would) be so bored”, then maybe. However, he keeps providing signs that he will continue on his same merry path.
A good many folks don’t want boring. So, entertaining it is.
Wrestlemania theatrics at the Oval Office.
“Marquess of Queensberry Rules” out.
Head (eye is insufficient) for an eye. We vs They. Red vs Blue. … seems the “new” reality.
Maybe. We’ll see.
By about April 30, we should finally get to “know” what trump is really about.
An interesting take on the left’s game wrt Comey and the email investigation…
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443867/justice-department-inspector-general-james-comey-investigation-delegitimize-trump
Will this prompt trump to renew his interest in a special prosecution on clinton and her emails?