Trump – he sure can dish it out, but…

I’ve been wondering whether all the stuff about Trump this last few weeks is going to hinder him. Not so much in the application of his programme, but rather in the perception of him. No one, not even he, likes to be regarded as a fool or a dupe or a patsy, but at the very least there’s a sense that his responses – not least this week in relation to intelligence – have been over the top. Richard Wolff in the Guardian made an interesting point that for a man who has been perceived as a master of communications his actual meetings with the press have been near catastrophic.

What is most ironic is that he is – to some degree – hoist by his own petard. Why are dossiers less credible than his pronouncements on Clinton or Obama over the last decade? Why should the idea of ties with the Russians be more unbelievable than birtherism? He is the one who has brought people into the theatre of the absurd. For him now to be complaining when others use similar approaches against him suggests no self-reflectivity at all.

Frankly the more salacious accusations are irrelevant – and given the lack of proof they aren’t worth referencing. But the broader picture is one that – at the least – requires a better response than he has given so far, and worse in a sense his response has been illuminating in regard to what he is like when under pressure.

What’s strangest of all is that he simply didn’t attempt to rise above it.

Instead he has waded in. Again, the point was made previously that he has little seeming public restraint. He is – as was mentioned earlier in the week, literally unable to let it go. And here we have another example. One can almost see the red mist descending.

But politically this may hurt and hurt badly. Already there are strong indications that his popularity was remarkably low, even as President elect.

He was voted in as the most unpopular president-elect in modern history and got slightly less unpopular in the weeks that followed, as the goodwill flowed. Even then, though, he clearly remained the most unpopular president-elect in modern history. Again, that was the honeymoon.

And now?

A new poll from Quinnipiac University suggests that Trump has reverted to his pre-election standing, with Americans having major concerns about his temperament and the direction in which his presidency will lead the country. Trump’s continued controversies seem to have put him right back where he was before he won the election.

There’s a raft of bad polling for him. And then…

And then it gets worse. Toward the bottom, Quinnipiac asked respondents whether they thought Trump’s behavior since the election made them feel better or worse about him. Although “better” won out in late November, 36 percent to 14 percent who said they felt worse, that showing has been flipped. Today, 28 percent say they feel worse about Trump since Election Day; just 23 percent feel better.
And clearly people still aren’t enamored of Trump’s social-media habits and fight-picking; by a 2-to-1 margin (64 percent to 32 percent), they think he should give up his personal Twitter account as president – bigger than the 59-to-35 margin in November.

In other words many of the things that define his public persona are poison to the US electorate. He has no comfort zone, no five or ten or fifteen percent of the polls above and beyond his core support to sustain him through the next week, month, year. His Presidency is already before he has been President for a single day defined, and in such a way that it is near impossible to see how he could claw back ground, let alone win the hearts and minds necessary to leave a positive legacy. One has to wonder what all this means for the future. Is it just me or is there an odd air of contingency about all this?

The full poll is available here.