The Gallup Daily Approval Tracking Poll for President Trump has moved to 42% approve, 54% disapprove, the biggest spread so far.
After a tumultuous and chaotic two weeks of the Trump presidency, we are now seeing a new raft of counter-intuitive articles ranging from ‘Does Trump Even Want to Succeed as President?’ to ‘How Trump Has Everyone Just Where He Wants Them and Is Kicking Ass.’ We should all bear in mind that while generally unpopular, Trump has extremely high levels of approval among Republican voters and continues to maintain near lockstep allegiance from congressional Republicans. But on Trump, in trying to figure out what and how he’s doing, we should keep it simple. Because at this point we know Trump quite well.
There are an endless series of divisions in American society which observers have identified as the key to understanding the rise of Trump. White v Black and Hispanic, college educated v non-college educated. Each of these divisions describe the current political polarization. But of course they all overlap. The one that seems most pertinent and illustrative to me for the moment is the division between major cities v small towns and rural areas. And we can see it playing out in contradictory and volatile ways as corporate America (especially consumer facing corporations) tries to find its footing in the Trump Era.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this division. Indeed, it’s been the growing division in American politics for years. On the Democrats’ side this is often referred to as the ‘coalition of the ascendent’. That means not necessarily people who are doing well but those who are doing well under the changing world of the early 21st century and those who expect to be doing better in the future. This is how you get what in many ways seems like an ungainly coalition which includes affluent usually urban professionals along with the young and historically marginalized minority populations.
Adam Cancryn, healthcare reporter for POLITICO Pro in Washington, D.C. will join us in the Hive to discuss issues relating to health care. He previously was the senior financial services and insurance reporter for S&P Global Market Intelligence (formerly SNL Financial), and ran the sports site “Began.” He’s written for The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires and the Philadelphia Business Journal.
Adam will join us for a chat about all things relating to healthcare. You can submit questions relating to the Affordable Care Act, private insurance, the future of health care, repeal and replace and more. If you’d like to participate but don’t have TPM Prime, sign up here.
At 10:05 PM Eastern this evening, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer emailed out the following statement in response to tonight’s court order.
At the earliest possible time, the Department of Justice intends to file an emergency stay of this outrageous order and defend the executive order of the President, which we believe is lawful and appropriate. The president’s order is intended to protect the homeland and he has the constitutional authority and responsibility to protect the American people.
As the law states, “Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”
At 10:16 PM, he issued an “Updated Statement” which removed the word “outrageous” from the first sentence.
I’m excited to announce a new program here at TPM, one I’ve been working on for the last couple months. It’s called the Future Is Now program and it will allow us to share our journalism with a new generation of readers and turbocharge our independent journalism in the newly dawning era in which it will be more important and needed than ever.
Today at the White House CEO event President Trump, leaning on the say-so and presence of big Wall Street CEOs, started ripping up the reforms put in place to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis. “We have some of the bankers here. There’s nobody better to tell me about Dodd-Frank than Jamie, so you’re going to tell me about it,” Trump told JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon.
There were reports last weekend that what appeared to be a military convoy driving through Kentucky were flying “Trump flags” on their military vehicles. It now turns out that they were in fact military vechiles, specially a Naval Special Warfare unit moving equipment and vehicles between two training locations. And yes, flying “Trump, Make American Great Again” banners.
Republican Senator Jim Risch of Idaho has been receiving so many anti-Trump visitors at his Boise office (as well as calls) that he’s closed the office to visitors and asked anyone who would like to visit the office to make an appointment in advance.
There seems to be a similar situation in Coeur d-Alene.