Trump Hits Another Job Approval Low As Presidency Marks 75th Day In Office

Two new polls show Donald Trump hitting new lows in the polls as we get closer to his 100th day in office.

Trump East Room Press Conference

A new poll shows Donald Trump’s job approval hitting another new low as his Administration marks its seventy-fifth day in office:

President Trump’s approval rating has tumbled 11 points since March, according to a new poll released Monday.

Thirty-four percent of Americans approve of Trump’s job performance in the latest Investor’s Business Daily (IBD)/TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics (TIPP) survey.

Fifty-six percent disprove of Trump’s showing instead, and Monday’s results mark an 11-point drop in Trump’s approval rating since the president’s 45 percent last month in the same poll.

“As his ambitious agenda encounters some obstacles in Congress, President Trump’s approval ratings have declined,” said Raghavan Mayur, president of TechnoMetrica and director of the IBD/TIPP poll.

“For instance, the inability of Congress to pass the proposed healthcare bill has weighed down Americans’ approval of Trump’s overall performance as president,” he added, citing last month’s defeat of the GOP’s American Health Care Act (AHCA).

Monday’s results found that 49 percent say Trump’s leadership is weak, contrasted by 35 percent who believe it is strong.

Thirty-nine percent are satisfied with America’s direction under Trump, an 11-point decrease from 50 percent in IBD/TIPP’s February survey.

Twenty-five percent said the AHCA would have improved the U.S. healthcare system, with 50 percent saying ObamaCare is sustainable if left alone and 48 percent believing it is not.

A new Quinnipiac poll shows even worse numbers for the Trump Presidency:

American voters give President Donald Trump a negative 35 – 57 percent job approval, with negative approval among men and white voters, leaving him below former President Barack Obama’s worst approval rating, a negative 38 – 57 percent in 2013, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today.

Today’s job approval rating compares to a negative 37 – 56 percent approval rating in a March 22 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University.

President Trump is behind among key elements of his base:

  • Men disapprove 51 – 39 percent;
  • Republicans approve 79 – 14 percent;
  • White voters disapprove 48 – 43 percent.

Disapproval is 63 – 31 percent among women, 91 – 6 percent among Democrats, 57 – 32 percent among independent voters and 77 – 16 percent among non-white voters.

American voters’ opinions of some of Trump’s personal qualities are mostly negative:

  • 61 – 34 percent that he is not honest;
  • 55 – 40 percent that he does not have good leadership skills;
  • 57 – 39 percent that he does not care about average Americans;
  • 66 – 29 percent that he is not level-headed;
  • 64 – 33 percent that he is a strong person;
  • 60 – 35 percent that he is intelligent;
  • 61 – 34 percent that he does not share their values.

“President Donald Trump continues to struggle, even among his most loyal supporters. Many of them would be hard pressed to see even a sliver of a silver lining in this troubling downward spiral,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

“President George W. Bush, who hit a negative 28 – 67 percent on May 14, 2008, had less support, but it took eight years, two unpopular wars and a staggering economy to get there.”

American voters say 55 – 39 percent that President Trump is keeping his campaign promises.

But 52 percent of voters say they are embarrassed to have Trump as president, while 27 percent are proud and 19 percent don’t feel either emotion.

Looking deeper into the poll, voters also disapprove of the way the President is handling specific issues, with 61% disapproving of his handling of environmental issues while just 29% approve. On the economy, where Trump’s numbers have been generally positive in the past, 48% of Americans disapprove of his handling of the economy while just 41% approve. On foreign policy, just one-third of Americans approve of Trump’s job performance in dealing with America’s overseas issues while 58% disapprove, On terrorism, 49% disapprove of Trump’s job approval while 42% approve. On health care where Trump is the poll finds 64% disapproving of his job performance while 28% give him a positive rating. Finally, on what some would say is Trump’s signature issue from the time he entered the campaign going forward, 57% disapprove while just 39% approve. It is only in health care where Trump is getting positive reviews, with 64% approving of his job performance while 28% give him a negative rating.

As it stands, Trump’s job approval numbers are the worst that we’ve seen for a new President since modern polling began after World War II, and it only seems to be getting worse. The trend began shortly after Trump took office on January 20th when, as I noted, his approval ratings after just ten days in office were decidedly negative even after taking into account the fact that he lost the popular vote. At the time, I argued that it was far too early to tell if this was just a reflection of a closely fought election or something bigger. Part of that answer came less than a week later when Trump officially hit a record low in job approval for incoming Presidents, and it only got worse by the time we got to the end of February. A month later, the numbers were looking even worse and that was before the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans tried and failed to pass a bill aimed at repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act.

Looking at the polling averages, the depths to which Trump has fallen are even more apparent, except when it comes to one particular group. At RealClearPolitics, Trump’s average stands at  39.8% approve and 53,3% disapprove, meaning that he has crossed the under-40 threshold that typically marks the point at which an Administration and his party should really start panicking over their political future. At Pollster, his numbers stand at 40.3% approve and 55.6% disapprove, but it’s when we look at the breakdown by party identification that we start to see why Republican politicians have yet to distance themselves from the White House. Among Democrats, of course, Trump’s numbers are predictably bad, with 85.2% disapproving of the job the President is doing and just 11,4% approving. Among Independents, the split is about the same as the population as a whole, with 36.4% approving of the President and 54,9%  disapproving. Among Republicans, though, Trump seems to be doing no wrong, with 82.1% approving and just 12,9% of Republicans disapproving.

The RealClearPolitics chart shows just how precipitous the trend has become for Trump:

Trump Job Approval RCP 4416

Given what we’ve seen from Washington, it’s unlikely that we’ll see the Trump Administration change behavior any time soon. If anything, we can expect nothing more than a continuation of the same behavior that we’ve seen over the past two and a half months, meaning that Trump’s number are likely to continue to fall or at least stay negative for the foreseeable future. What that means going forward, though, is unclear. With Republicans controlling Congress, it’s really up to them to decide how far Trump is able to get and so far they’re doing very little to stop him. A big part of the reason for that can be seen in the poll numbers I posted above. While Trump is unpopular almost completely across the board, he remains very popular among Republicans. This means that Republicans who stand up against him risk a primary challenge next year. Because of that, you’re seeing even the kind of conservatives who would ordinarily oppose a guy like Trump remaining largely quiet. The only way they’re likely to turn around is if and when Trump’s approval among Republican votes start to turn negative, or at least until his numbers among Independents become even more negative than they already are. Until that happens, you can expect Congress to line up behind Trump fairly reliably. Whether that’s in their long-term interest, of course, is another question.

Note: This post was updated to fix errors regarding the findings of the Quinnipiac Poll with respect to the environment and health care.

 

 

FILED UNDER: Congress, Environment, Terrorism, US Politics, , , , , , , , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. BigT says:

    So much winning!

  2. al-Alameda says:

    As long as Republicans control congress it almost does not matter how low the ratings go.

    The core constituents and Capitol Hill are staying with Trump because to them, the alternative is the Democratic Party (we know them as Satan’s Family). Besides, if it gets ‘impeachment bad’ it probably works out better for the Republican agenda anyway because Mike Pence is deadly serious about this stuff.

  3. reid says:

    Nobody knew governmentin’ could be so complicated!

  4. Neil Hudelson says:

    100% disapproval in 100 days! You can do it, Trump!

  5. michael reynolds says:

    Proving that you can fool a third of the people all the time.

    Let’s see where his numbers go when the perp walks start. Manafort, Page, Stone, Flynn. And perhaps family as well. Looking at you, Jared.

  6. HarvardLaw92 says:

    HowLowCanDeyGo?! 🙂

    My freude is over-schadened.

  7. Scott says:

    A lot of people voted for Trump because he presented an alternative viewpoint (no matter how muddy that viewpoint was). It wasn’t terribly coherent but people voted emotionally, not rationally. Now they are finding he was full of crap and can’t or won’t deliver on what they thought his promises were. He is finding out that if you make unpopular proposals, he will become unpopular.

    Either he doesn’t understand his voters as well as everybody says or he thought he could BS them. Now he’s caught. He may not recover.

  8. HarvardLaw92 says:

    @michael reynolds:

    There is a core constituency of the Republican base that is just stone cold stupid. They’ll support this clown all the way to the bottom of the canyon, Wile-E-Coyote style.

    It’s too early yet to tell, but this is starting to smell like the implosion of the Republican Party as we currently know it. Civil wars can be beautiful things …

  9. Daryl's other brother Darryl says:

    What has he accomplished in 75 days? a bunch of largely symbolic EO’s?
    The RCP Approval trend line does not look good…especially if you are a thin-orange-skinned narcissist that lives by the ratings.
    39.8 approve? I wonder what the Wile-E-Coyote line, that HarvardLaw92 refers to, is?
    You can already see Netanyahu and el-Sisi and Assad taking advantage of these neophytes. Not to mention Putin.
    And now the House is going to come out with another version of Trumpcare that does away with Pre-Existing Conditions coverage?
    Comb-over Donnie is winning!!!!

  10. CSK says:

    @Neil Hudelson:

    I don’t think he’ll ever get quite as low as 100% disapproval–he’ll always have some support, mostly among idiots and those who are simply too embarrassed (as well they should be) to admit they were catastrophically wrong about him.

    But I’d be very pleased with any single-digit approval rating.

  11. Mikey says:

    @HarvardLaw92:

    They’ll support this clown all the way to the bottom of the canyon, Wile-E-Coyote style.

    These are the people who will vote for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party, then get upset when it’s THEIR face that gets eaten…and next election, vote faithfully (although facelessly) for the LEPFP once again.

  12. Ig'nint in Daejeon says:

    @CSK: I think the closest he’ll get to 100% disapproval is 73. GOP support isn’t eroding quickly enough.

  13. SenyorDave says:

    Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Trump base:

    “The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of who will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.”

    A classic political quote (from the blog “Balloon Juice”, attributed to commenter Davis X. Machina)

  14. CSK says:

    @Ig’nint in Daejeon:

    Possibly. After this year, I’m willing to concede almost any possibility. You could well be right. But the thing is, his fan club members are going to get awfully sick of defending all his broken promises by responding that, oh, well he never really meant what he said to be taken literally. The big, beautiful, 30-foot-high 1565-mile-long Wall? Sure, some barbed wire and a few keep-out signs is great with us!

    I read with great pleasure today that there’s an internecine war between Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon over which of the two will be the actual president of the United States as long as TrumpPuppet has his flabby butt parked in the chair behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. I had predicted this long ago, but it’s nice to have it confirmed independently.

  15. Daryl's other brother Darryl says:

    ISIS spokesman Abi al-Hassan al-Muhajer:

    “…America you have drowned and there is no savior, and you have become prey for the soldiers of the caliphate in every part of the earth, you are bankrupt and the signs of your demise are evident to every eye…There is no more evidence than the fact that you are being run by an idiot who does not know what Syria or Iraq or Islam is…”

    Dumb Don will get sucked in by this guy…watch. WW3 is just around the corner.

  16. Jen says:

    I honestly didn’t believe I could think less of him than I already did, but that imbecilic statement on Assad/Syria has me shaking my head, yet again. Nothing is ever this clown’s fault, even when it’s on his watch. No wonder his numbers are tanking.

    I get the feeling that Jared’s increasing role has more to do with the realization that Trump’s about to take the family name into crazy-negative territory, and he is attempting to salvage what he can. Honestly, what a mess.

  17. gVOR08 says:

    @Jen: I’m thinking better of him. I was afraid he’d go for Putin style autarchy, but he’s showing he’s too@Daryl’s other brother Darryl: dumb for it. Dumber than I thought he was is a good thing.

  18. gVOR08 says:

    @Daryl’s other brother Darryl:

    What has he accomplished in 75 days? a bunch of largely symbolic EO’s?

    Right. But according to the mighty right wing Wurlitzer he’s doing wonderfully, and anyone who says otherwise is elitist fake news.

  19. Daryl's other brother Darryl says:

    @Jen:

    Nothing is ever this clown’s fault, even when it’s on his watch.

    If the Syrian thing had just happened out of the blue…then, hey, he’s only been on the job for 75 days. But it wasn’t out of the blue. His SoS and his UN Ambassador just gave Assad the Good House-Keeping Seal of Approval. (which I assume is in line with what Putin wants from Trump) So you don’t get to make those statements and then wash your hands of whatever happens next.
    McCain

    “…Bashar Assad and his friends, the Russians, take note of what Americans say. I’m sure they took note of what our secretary of state said just the other day that the Syrian people would be determining their own future themselves — one of the more incredible statements I’ve ever heard…I’m sure they are encouraged to know the United States is withdrawing and seeking a new arrangement with the Russians…It is another disgraceful chapter in American history and it was predictable…”

    As for Obama being weak; in 2016 the US dropped over 26,000 bombs. That means every day last year, there were 72 bombs dropped; three bombs an hour, 24 hours a day. Most were in Syria and Iraq.
    This is what happens when you have Dunning-Kruger poster children running the White House.

  20. gVOR08 says:

    Via Booman, this article is really scary. A long read, but worth it. I’ve seen snatches of this elsewhere, but Who.What.Why and the authors are new names to me. Don’t know how much credibility to give them. Basically their story is that Trump has for years been in bed with a Russian mobster who’s been the conduit for loans to Trump. And the mobster is not only deep into the Russian mafia, he’s also been in bed with the FBI for years. Might explain why Comey’s been so hinky. They may be protecting a longstanding, deep operation against the Russian mob. Or maybe the FBI has been corrupted. It’s been known for some time that the guy, Felix Dater, is a snitch. His mob boss, a Putin buddy, must think the guy’s reliable, he’s still alive.

    If much of this is true, the issue will be whether Trump can president from a federal pen, or does that more or less automatically trigger impeachment and/or the 25th Amendment. Or maybe resignation will be part of Trump’s plea or immunity bargain.

    Like I said, not sure how seriously to take this, but it sure feels like something’s going to blow up.

  21. Jake says:
  22. Davebo says:

    @CSK: It will never get to single digits because the people you describe make up more than 10% of the population. Hell, more than 20%.

  23. CSK says:

    @Jake:

    Come back with a better source of information that The Conservative Nuthouse, okay? Sundance, who appears to run it, came up with a very elaborate theory that Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Ben Carson, Rick Perry, John Kasich, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, et al, were engaged in a giant conspiracy to hand the 2016 nomination to Jeb Bush. When that didn’t pan out, he became Trump’s chief propagandist.

    Don’t offer “proof” from deranged, paranoid semi-literate bloggers.

  24. al-Alameda says:

    @Jake:

    Connecting the dots

    Connect the dots indeed.
    Susan Rice was not the only one who probably became aware that Trump and his associates were in bed with the Russians.

  25. HarvardLaw92 says:

    @Jake:

    And we’re back to citing the Treehouse for Morons again … 🙄

  26. Terrye Cravens says:

    I think Trump is starting to fall with Republicans too. I saw 2 polls today that him in the 70s. That is much lower than it was a couple of months ago.

  27. Jake says:
  28. al-Alameda says:

    @Jake:

    Your no lawyer.

    “Your”?
    By the way how do you feel now knowing that Susan Rice probably knew that Trump and his associates were in bed with the Russians?

  29. Terrye Cravens says:

    @Jake: So, the best defense is a good offense? I realize that in the right wing universe all of this is supposed to vindicate Trump, but in fact it only shows that Rice was doing her job and Trump’s people were involved with a lot of shady foreigners. Not that you guys will ever see it that way. Nope, you have alternative facts to explain it all away. Even the secret meetings.

  30. grumpy realist says:

    @Jake: I suggest you look at any of the good solid reporting that has been done on Trump over the years.

    Anyone who didn’t already suspect he was in bed with the Russian mafia is too clueless to be walking loose without a keeper.

    (I’m not even calling Trump a “traitor”, because I think that requires a mens rea that Trump doesn’t possess. Trump is someone who is too DUMB to understand what treason is. Imagine that.)

  31. Scott says:

    @Jake: Yes, the dots are being connected. Just not in the way you think or want.

    Listen, buddy. The National Security Advisor was doing her job and passing on intelligence. Trump and company were secondary to who was being surveilled. They were collateral damage, as it were.

    But as the song goes, ” Your so vain, you probably think this spying is about you”.

  32. CSK says:

    @Jake:

    Well, actually, he is a lawyer, and he knows the difference between “your” and “you’re,”which you, quite clearly, do not.

  33. Not the IT Dept. says:

    Hey, let up on Wile-E-Coyote. Whatever else you can say about the critter, he had work ethic. You didn’t catch him going golfing every five days when he was hunting roadrunner!

    There was another article today – this one in the NYT – about Trump voters not being able to believe that Trump was cutting programs that helped them. They can’t understand it. If only someone could tell him they were using these programs, then he’d refund them again. Asked what should be defunded, they said the Obamaphone program – which isn’t a government program but a joint community effort of the telecomm industry. It’s pretty clear that what they want more than anything is an assurance that they are not the bottom rung of the ladder, that there is still a group of people they can look down on with contempt, that they know they’re better than.

    There is no getting through to those people without a jackhammer to the brainpan.

  34. rachel says:

    @gVOR08: Of course this is not the same Mighty Right Wing Wurlitzer that threw fits over Obama’s ‘unconstitutional,’ ‘dictatorial’ EOs…

    Hahaha. Je m’amuse.

  35. gVOR08 says:

    @Not the IT Dept.:

    the Obamaphone program – which isn’t a government program but a joint community effort of the telecomm industry.

    Started during the W admin, IIRC.

  36. Not the IT Dept. says:

    Yup. And it tells you just how unplugged into the 21st century these people are that they probably think cell phones are really expensive luxury items because they still have land lines.

  37. Just Another Ex-Republican says:

    I’m not sure if I would be amused or scared by someone telling Trump that half the country now specifically views his leadership as “weak.” The meltdown would be epic (and amusing, as long as it doesn’t start WWIII).

  38. teve tory says:

    @gVOR08: Earlier:

    .

    The FCC established the Lifeline program in 1985 to ensure that qualifying low-income consumers could afford phone service and the opportunities and security it provides. Congress supported and strengthened Lifeline in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, requiring that affordable service and advanced communications be available to low-income consumers across the country.

    It started as landlines under Reagan, for a simple reason–have you ever tried getting a job without a phone number?

  39. michilines says:

    @teve tory: As late as 1999, people in the former Soviet Republics were waiting in years long lines for home phones. I think this one item may have been a 1980’s sort of thing to prove that at least our poor people had phones.

  40. Pch101 says:

    Lifeline service was a byproduct of the Bell telephone breakup.

    When the Bell monopoly was in place, high long-distance charges reduced the cost of local service. When the phone company was broken up, those subsidies went away, infrastructure was upgraded, and the cost of local service rose substantially.

    Lifeline was intended to ensure that cheap local service would be available for lower-income people once the monopoly was scrapped.

    I suppose that you can blame Obama for what occurred during the Reagan administration. But that would require you to be an utter moron.

  41. rachel says:

    @Pch101:

    I suppose that you can blame Obama for what occurred during the Reagan administration. But that would require you to be an utter moron.

    Pffft, like those are in short supply.

  42. KM says:

    @Not the IT Dept. :

    Link please? Need a good read this morning

  43. Daryl's other brother Darryl says:
  44. CSK says:

    The Washington Post has a story this morning about how Roger Stone (who believes himself to be a target of the Deep State) went on Infowars to inform Alex Jones that Jared Kushner is feeding anti-Bannon stories to Joe Scarborough.

  45. Not the IT Dept. says:
  46. Daryl's other brother Darryl says:

    @Daryl’s other brother Darryl:
    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/what-isis-fighters-think-of-trump-214843
    Meanwhile the most tricky diplomatic situation on the globe…N. Korea…is bubbling up.
    http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/north-korea-fires-missile-east-china-sea-south-korea-n742731
    I promise you that Kim Jong Un will pop off another missile while Chinese President Xi Jinping and Comb-over Donnie meet for a game of golf in Palm beach.
    WW3, here we come.

  47. MarkedMan says:

    @gVOR08:

    Via Booman, this article is really scary. A long read, but worth it.

    TalkingPointsMemo.com has also been on this pretty hard, and for a long time.Note that the link is #4 in the series.

    So – What do you do when you have actually evidence of serious criminal activity, personally, by a sitting president? Especially when he appoints the heads of the federal agencies investigating and prosecuting the crimes.

  48. MarkedMan says:

    @Not the IT Dept.:

    Trump voters not being able to believe that Trump was cutting programs that helped them. They can’t understand it. If only someone could tell him they were using these programs, then he’d refund them again.

    A bit of a tangent but a number of years ago I became interested in Joan of Arc and the era in history that created her. Very long story short: various kings had raised armies and sent them on the crusades for decades. When these armies returned the soldiers did not want to go back to a miserable life of subsistence farming. The Kings and Cardinals, justifiably worried about these hardened troops roaming around Paris and other important cities, gave them the nod to go rape and pillage various unimportant sections of the country. Joan, a poor farm girl, lived in one of these benighted sections and it was the common belief among the peasants (who of course knew nothing of these deals) that the King was good, but far off, and if only someone could reach him and tell him, he would send his armies to slaughter the brigands. In fact, that was what Joan was essentially trying to do: raise an army to fight her way to the King (actually, the Dauphin, but that’s a different story) in order to make him aware of the injustice.

    I bring this up because a lot of Trump voters are essentially the French peasants in this analogy. They are besieged and beset, with declining job prospects and opioid epidemics and health problems storming across their lands. They think if they can only get word to Trump he will understand, not realizing that Trump and his cronies have actively been ripping them off. Trump University didn’t play on the sophisticates with cash in their pockets – it was a scam perpetrated on the unsophisticated with lessons on how to run up credit card debt in return for nothing.

    They think Trump is the solution, when he’s actually much worse than those that merely ignore their plight.

  49. James Pearce says:

    @CSK:

    went on Infowars to inform Alex Jones that Jared Kushner is feeding anti-Bannon stories to Joe Scarborough.

    I saw a bit of Alex Jones’ rant against Adam Schiff the other day. The vulgarity of it wasn’t really shocking –although he should be grateful he’s not under the purview of the FCC– but it occurred to me that this behavior wouldn’t be acceptable on a playground, but here we are….it’s the hallmark of the Trump administration.

    I guess we can tackle that problem after we deal with the Pepsi commercial problem though, right?

  50. grumpy realist says:

    OT but for those of you following the whole Brexit mess I had to laugh at this.

  51. Jen says:

    @Daryl’s other brother Darryl: The North Korea thing is highly disturbing.

    First we have Tillerson saying that the US has “spoken enough” about N. Korea and that all options are on the table. Then we have the Twitterer-in-Chief spouting off that China hasn’t done enough and that the US can solve this on its own…this does not bode well. The absolute last thing China wants is a lot of North Korean refugees on its border. It also prefers having that N. Korea buffer between China and a US ally. Tillerson signals that Syria is on its own, Assad gases his own people. Tillerson signals that the “era of patient diplomacy” is over wrt N. Korea, and they start lobbing missiles.

    I’m not enjoying this–it’s dangerous.

  52. HarvardLaw92 says:

    @MarkedMan:

    It rather reminds me of the Russian peasants who marched on the Winter Palace, hoping that if they could just tell the Tsar about their plight, why he would help them straightaway.

    We all know what happened next …

  53. Moosebreath says:

    @Jen:

    “The absolute last thing China wants is a lot of North Korean refugees on its border.”

    I think US troops in North Korea would be high on the list of things China does not want as well.

  54. jake says:
  55. bookdragon says:

    And despite all of the important issues, Trump still finds time to be petty and throw his weight around over …crayons.

    Crayola To Retire “Dandelion” Colored Crayon After Pressure From White House

    (article is satire, but I honestly had to wonder if it might not be true… which says a lot)

  56. KM says:

    @Not the IT Dept:

    Thanks! There’s quite a bit of “If only the Czar knew” running around. That wonderful false assumption that the Big Daddy Authority Figure wouldn’t be doing this / letting this happen if only he was aware of how much pain it was causing his loyalists. It is, deep down, a self-defensive mechanism against the cold, hard reality that you don’t matter to them… that is, you wouldn’t if you were important enough to even notice and he’s not doing it on purpose. It’s a personal relationship, you see. A very one-sided, desperate, abusive relationship. These people will stay loyal because they’ll come up with any excuse under the sun to forgive their Czar for not noticing their plight. It will always be someone else’s fault while they sit and breathlessly wait for him to come save them.

    The Czar knows. He doesn’t give a damn.

  57. Daryl's other brother Darryl says:

    @jake:
    It figures that you would be believe a conspiracy theorist that promotes Pizza-Gate and thinks that date rape doesn’t exist.
    With every comment you type, you manage to exhibit less and less intelligence.
    What a maroon…

  58. teve tory says:

    Media Matters:

    Cernovich’s allegiance to the “alt-right,” a self-descriptor for a faction of the white nationalist movement, has been repeatedly documented. In 2015 he explained, “I went from libertarian to alt-right after realizing tolerance only went one way and diversity is code for white genocide.” Additionally, in a series of since-deleted tweets, Cernovich declared that “white genocide is real” and “white genocide will sweep up the [social justice warriors].” Cernovich also traffics in sexist rhetoric, having claimed that “date rape does not exist” and “misogyny gets you laid” and said that people who “love black women” should “slut shame them” to keep them from getting AIDS.
    Cernovich has also helped popularize numerous conspiracy theories, including the “Pizzagate” story that claimed an underground child sex trafficking ring was run out of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor and involved top Democratic officials. Despite widespread debunking, Cernovich recently claimed that the restaurant was a place “where a lot of pedophiles meet.” He often uses conspiracy theories to weaponize his social media following against his critics, such as when he baseless claimed satirical video editor Vic Berger was a pedophile after Berger published videos mocking Cernovich.

  59. grumpy realist says:

    @jake: It’s ZeroHedge. About as trustworthy as Breitbart or Crazy Ctharls Conspiracy site.

    But I’m sure you believe them as well….tell me, how many Nigerian princes have you sent money to today?

  60. Ig'nint in Transit says:

    @Pch101: I’m not following this: why are people opposed to low income people having the same access to phone service that they’d had for the previous 50 or so years?

  61. Ig'nint in Transit says:

    @Jen: The degree to which Americans–especially one’s who have access to information the general population doesn’t–believe that China has leverage over NK is sometimes breathtaking. China is not without leverage, but the idea that China can simply call off Jong-eun or give him orders is preposterous.

  62. Mikey says:

    @grumpy realist: Zerohedge is basically a Russian propaganda outlet. Jake and his fellow-travelers always link to it anyway, or more likely because.

  63. teve tory says:

    @Ig’nint in Transit: Obama is black.

    I know that sounds glib, but remember when the airwaves switched to digital, and to ease the transition the government gave everyone coupons for a couple cheap digital decoders? I literally had relatives angry that Obama was giving their tax dollars to “Them” so that “They” could watch his speeches.

  64. MarkedMan says:

    @Ig’nint in Transit:

    The degree to which Americans–especially one’s who have access to information the general population doesn’t–believe that China has leverage over NK is sometimes breathtaking.

    FWIW, my impression from when I lived in China was that pre Baby Kim the average college educated middle class person, or at least the ones I talked to in Shanghai, had that same opinion. They thought of NK as a colorfully crazy backwater that subsisted on Chinese handouts. When Baby Kim took over, he started to actively and publicly disrespect Xi and therefore China, and their opinion changed. I personally don’t understand China’s game here: Missiles that can reach American territory can easily reach Beijing.

  65. Pch101 says:

    @MarkedMan:

    I personally don’t understand China’s game here

    North Korea serves as a Chinese buffer zone, the existence of which checks American dominance in the region.

    Of course, being teamed up with North Korea is akin to keeping a rabid dog as a pet. But they can’t shoot the dog without suffering repercussions themselves.

  66. teve tory says:

    @MarkedMan:

    Missiles that can reach American territory can easily reach Beijing.

    What American territory can North Korea’s missiles reach, exactly? Their intermediate-range missile can maybe go 6,000 km, but Hawaii is 7,500 km away. Their long range missile, the Taepodong 2, has never been demonstrated to work as an ICBM.