As Trump slides in new polls, he retreats deeper into Fox News

 WASHINGTON D.C (The Washington Post).- According to a new poll, during Donald Trump’s first two years in office, he has largely failed. The new Post-ABC News poll finds that most Americans believe Trump is failing enormously. A large majority of people polled, say he lacks the character to be president; lacks confidence that he’ll make the right decisions for the good of the country’s future; and (this one will really sting) say he isn’t good at making deals.

As an answer to this results, Trump’s media and political allies are working energetically to construct a protection shield around Trump, in order to prevent him from grasping the most basic political realities of the moment.

This effort is in order to create an alternative narrative that portrays Trump’s cave in the shutdown fight as a sign that he holds a strong hand, which in turn is designed to restrain him to refuse real compromise in the next round of talks.

Some highlights from the poll.

• 64% do not have confidence that Trump will make the right decisions for the country’s future.
• 58% say Trump is not good at constructing political deals.
• 57% rate Trump’s handling of border security negatively.
• 61% consider Trump is not honest nor reliable.
• 56% consider that Trump has not brought the needed change to Washington.
• 58% consider Trump lacks temperament to serve effectively as president.
• 65% consider that Trump does not understand the problems of people like them.

A new NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll reports similar findings across the board.

As Trump begins the second half of his first term, has suffered one of the most significant defeats of his presidency, having capitulated to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and other congressional Democrats in a standoff over building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — a dispute that brought about the longest U.S. government shutdown in history.

This survey was completed before Trump agreed to reopen the government without a commitment to fund a border wall, which he has championed since he was a candidate.

Negotiations will continue over the next three weeks. Trump’s failed gamble trying to force Democrats to give in first, has caused dismay among many congressional Republicans, and threatens to question the president’s self-claim of being a “great/amazing” dealmaker.

Economic Issues.

Americans had high expectations about Trump´s ability to handle an economy that was growing steadily, if slowly, after the financial crash a decade earlier.

In these two years, the pace of economic growth has increased and the unemployment rate has dropped even lower, both in part because of the big tax-cut bill that Republicans approved and the president signed.

The stock market, after a strong rise during much of the first two years of Trump’s presidency, has recently experienced a sharp drop and volatility amid doubts about the future.

To the American people, that record adds up to lowered ratings for the president since his inauguration.

• About 6 in 10 Americans expected him to perform well on these fronts. Today, the public is divided evenly, with 49 percent giving him positive marks on his handling of the economy and 49 percent giving him negative marks.
• Even those most positive or negative are split evenly, with 27 percent saying his handling has been “excellent” and 27 percent saying it has been “poor.”
• The starkest gap between Trump’s current ratings and Americans’ initially positive expectations is on the federal deficit. Two years ago, 50 percent of Americans thought Trump would do an excellent or good job handling the deficit. The new poll finds 33 percent saying he has done well, a 17-point drop that occurred across party lines.
• Many Republicans have shifted in their views. Two years ago, 87 percent of Republicans said they expected him to deal with the deficit effectively. Today, 67 percent of that group think he has done that. Among independents, the number who say he would effectively tackle the deficit has dropped from 52 percent to 27 percent.

Another issue where Trump has performed below initial expectations is health care.

• His positive ratings have fallen from 44 percent to 33 percent.
• The sharpest falloff came among independents, from 48 percent saying they expected him to do a good job with the issue to 22 percent. When Trump came into office, he and Republicans promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, but those aspirations eventually died in Congress.

Americans grade Trump the worst on issues dealing with women and race relations, both areas in which he started with low expectations. About one-third say he has done an excellent or good job on each in his first two years. 6 in 10 adults call his performance “poor”.

On attributes relating to the conduct of a president, majorities say Trump does not have the personality or temperament to be president, and is not an effective political dealmaker. Nor do they think he has fulfilled a basic campaign promise, with a majority saying he has not brought needed change to Washington.

The perceptions of Trump vary across demographic and regional lines. White and nonwhite people rated Trump’s economic performance lower than expected, with similar declines. A majority of whites, 58 percent, approve of his economic performance while only a third of nonwhite Americans gave him good or excellent grades on the economy. 

Foxland

Trump uses Fox News obsessively for validation. In his own mind, the political threat does not come from the mounting legal struggles he faces (a “witch hunt” as he calls it) or from his malicious and deeply destructive shutdown for the sake of his disliked wall. The real political danger to Trump, comes from his failure to negotiate. Something that according to himself, he is “amazing” and an expert.

Apparently, Mr. Trump doesn´t accept the fact that Democrats now control the House because in Foxland there is so much space for acknowledgment and adulation, as the polls say Trump is not meeting the public’s modest expectations for his job performance.

Video by the Washington Post

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