His approval rating ties his rating at this point in his first term — worse than any other president in recorded history. That was the consensus finding from a poll taken during President Donald Trump’s first few weeks in office.
This is the second of a two-part series based on Earl Ofari Hutchinson’s latest book “Conned: Why
MAGA Nation?” (Middle Passage Press).
There were two takeaways from this that might be considered at odds with each other depending on how and who was spinning it about Trump.
The first was who made the observation about Trump’s plunging approval rating after his first 100 days in office at the end of April. The observation came from a Democratic pollster. His negative evaluation of Trump’s standing was predictable.
The second was the bruising fact that the poll was one of several polls that showed more people than ever rated Trump’s performance poor, if not outright damaging to the country. Presumably, that included countless numbers of people who voted for him, maybe even cheered him lustily during the campaign.
The obvious question then was did Trump’s rush downward in his approval ratings indicate that more than a few Trump boosters were finally willing to say they had soured on him, maybe even regretted voting for him? Many Trump watchers, analysts and pollsters searched endlessly to find and get quotes from those individuals that expressed their disenchantment with Trump.
A few were willing to go on record expressing some buyer’s remorse about their vote for him. But they still represented the tiniest of a minority.
Trump loyalists dismissed or ridiculed the search for such individuals as little more than an example of what was derisively labeled by Trump backers as the Trump Derangement Syndrome.
This handily coined term supposedly was a condition to malign Trump that was concocted by Trump’s avowed liberal and leftist mortal enemies. They twisted, savaged and impugned every word and action of his.
The intent was to poison the public on him. In other words, denigrating Trump had become a near clinical obsession with them. The hope was that this would influence more Trump backers to turn on him and say so publicly.
There were certainly plenty of dubious Trump actions that could give a Trump voter pause to question whether they made the right decision in voting for him. Right off the top was Trump’s slightly veiled hammer of Medicare. Any changes here had potential damaging effect on 70 million people that depended on Medicare for their health coverage and needs.
The greatest threat was the green light to increase costs, deny coverage or outright total privatization of Medicare services. The biggest hit if one or more of those calamities happened would be on those who live in rural areas where access and choices to Medicare covered health facilities were far more limited. The vast majority of rural residents and seniors were Trump backers.
That was only the start. Trump gutted programs that eased requirement repayment requirements for student loans.
The student borrowers, their parents that co-signed loans for them, and the dwindling number of employees at the Department of Education would face bureaucratic chaos, delayed processing and fewer standard borrower protections.
Many of those affected were Trump voters. Further, the confused repayment options and a lack of trained support staff could create costly mistakes for borrowers nearing or already in retirement.
Price increases, medical care cuts, the mass firings of federal workers, downsizing the Veterans Administration, IRS and Social Security, eliminating the Department of Education, and whittling away at other government agencies were ruthlessly pushed by Trump the instant he took the reins of power. Seniors, retirees, farmers, labor groups were all adversely affected by the assault. Again, a sizeable number of them were Trump voters.
Still, nearly 75% of Trump voters maintained that they made the right decision in voting for him. A scant 2% said they regretted their vote for him, while a minuscule 1% conceded only that they “might” have not voted for him.
Still, there was little indication that despite the economic pain he caused millions of his voters they were willing to break ranks with him. How long that would be the case, no one could predict. But the point is, Trump is still riding high in the saddle pain inflicted on others.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the host of the weekly the Hutchinson Report Facebook Livestreamed.
