This week’s White House Report Card has something for everybody with President Trump dealing with gun control, a potential trade war, staff turmoil and his reelection campaign.
Neither of our graders, pollster John Zogby or conservative analyst Jed Babbin, saw it as a good week but Zogby noted that Trump’s supporters are still with him and his approval rating is 48 percent.
John Zogby
John Zogby
President Trump unleashed his inner Democrat this week. First he confounded his own party by supporting a full range of gun control measures, calling for legislation by Congress and suggesting he might issue an executive order banning bump stock enhancements. In the process he enraged the NRA as Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Amy Klobuchar smiled.
By the end of the week he was praised by union leaders for establishing huge tariffs on steel, a move that Wall Street investors hated.
At the same time, he lost his fourth communications director and 20th senior White House official, watched as his son-in-law got his wings clipped, witnessed his chief of staff exert more influence, and saw his former campaign manager Paul Manafort indicted again for Russian-related money-laundering.
REST IN PEACE BILLY GRAHAM! pic.twitter.com/2qMoUccVC2
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 2, 2018
He again sparred with his own attorney general, this time an especially nasty spectacle. All of this fueling even more speculation that the administration is in a tailspin of disarray and that the president is in deep trouble.
When a country Taxes our products coming in at, say, 50%, and we Tax the same product coming into our country at ZERO, not fair or smart. We will soon be starting RECIPROCAL TAXES so that we will charge the same thing as they charge us. $800 Billion Trade Deficit-have no choice!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 2, 2018
So what does Trump do? He announces that he will seek re-election in 2020. And by the way, applications for unemployment were at a 49-year low this week. My son’s Zogby Analytics Poll reveals a 48 percent job approval rating.
Grade C (for Confounding)
Jed Babbin
The first half of President Trump’s week was dominated by the aftershocks of the February 14 Parkland, Florida high school shootings and in dealing with his cabinet and White House staff. And then he attacked Attorney General Jeff Sessions yet again and started a trade war.
Jed Babbin
The president continued to demand fast action on legislation related to gun control. In addition to the things he proposed last week, Trump wants to raise the age for legal purchase of rifles to 21 and also said that guns should be confiscated from mentally disturbed people before they were allowed due process on the decision to confiscate. In one meeting with several senators, he chastised the pols, saying they were scared of the National Rifle Association.
The courts were uneven in giving the president one big win and one equally big loss this week. First, a California federal court ruled that the construction of Trump’s border wall could proceed despite environmentalists’ objections because the president has the power to waive environmental laws in such cases. Second, the Supreme Court rejected an unusual Justice Department motion to rule on the president’s executive order revoking former president Obama’s “Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals” executive order effective later this month. Though a very long shot for DoJ, the motion’s failure is not likely to affect the outcome of the case. After the case goes through the Ninth Circus court of appeals, SCOTUS is almost sure to uphold the president’s action.
I had a great meeting tonight with @realDonaldTrump & @VP. We all want safe schools, mental health reform and to keep guns away from dangerous people. POTUS & VPOTUS support the Second Amendment, support strong due process and don’t want gun control. #NRA #MAGA
— Chris Cox (@ChrisCoxNRA) March 2, 2018
White House Communications Director Hope Hicks resigned. Hicks was one of Trump’s closest confidants. She resigned quickly after her testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence during which she reportedly admitted that she told “white lies” for the president. White House chief of staff John Kelly reduced Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s security clearance from “top secret” to just “secret,” severely limiting Kushner’s access to classified information. Kushner is rumored to be Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s next big target. As a result of the reduced clearance Kusher, supposedly leading Trump’s initiative for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, will no longer have access to any intelligence information outside the White House rumor mill.
Meanwhile, Trump resumed his castigation campaign against Attorney General Jeff Sessions over Sessions’s leaving the investigation of the FBI’s apparent abuses of power under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on Trump campaign advisors during the 2016 campaign and through the transition to the DoJ inspector general. Sessions’s action was entirely right and the president entirely wrong. Trump’s demand was, in effect, that Sessions use the FBI to investigate itself, which would be an absurdity.
The president announced that he will impose tariffs on steel (25 percent) and aluminum (10 percent) imports next week, praising trade wars as good things. The response from our trading partners will have enormously effects on our entire economy, proving the president as wrong as Smoot and Hawley were in 1930.
Grade D-
John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Poll and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His latest book is We are Many, We are One: Neo-Tribes and Tribal Analytics in 21st Century America. Follow him on Twitter @TheJohnZogby
Jed Babbin is an Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on Twitter @jedbabbin
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
