The Numbers Are Better for Donald Trump Than You Think. Here's Why

If history holds true, President Donald Trump is about to enter a rougher period of his presidency.

The most current forecasts show Republicans are likely to lose the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, while maintaining their narrow majority in the Senate. That would mean new Democratic-led investigations and gridlock on his legislative agenda.

But that doesn’t mean that Trump is in trouble when it comes to his own re-election. In fact, there are a few numbers that might leave him optimistic about the overall state of his presidency as he heads into its next phase.

Most Americans have not approved of the job Trump is doing as president since shortly after inauguration.

After nearly two years, Trump’s job approval rating remains underwater. A FiveThirtyEight aggregation of polls shows Trump with a 52% disapproval and only 43% approval, while a RealClearPolitics poll average and Gallup’s weekly job approval poll show similar numbers.

But the big picture is that those numbers really haven’t changed much, which is uniquely among recent presidents. At times, Trump has dipped into the mid 30s on approval and he has seen his disapproval hit the low 60s, but the numbers return to normal after a while. Overall, his approval is like a well-built storm cellar: There’s a low ceiling, but the floor is stable.

Keep in mind that all this has happened even as Trump has done things that pundits argued would have hurt a typical president: arguing for moral equivalence between white supremacists and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, casting doubt on U.S. intelligence services while standing next to Russian President Vladimir Putin, mocking a woman who accused a Supreme Court nominee of sexual assault at a rally....

ALL Americans have been programmed to BELIEVE the news. They get their news sound bites and remember the bottom line: In this case the RATS will get a majority in the House and they will hold on to their thin majority in the Senate.
Typically, whether Americans have a genius IQ or they are borderline Forest Gump level idiots, they think what they are told to think. The 2016 election proved to those of us who are paying attention that the Presstitutes are nothing but RAT propagandists who are working for the RAT party but the percentage who still fit the old paradigm is probably still a majority.

It will take time for the average American to get to the point that they look at CBS in the same light as the Russians looked at Pravada during the cold war: NOTING BUT LIES.

The First Amendment did not create freedom of the press, it merely reified, or fixed in place, the freedom that the press already enjoyed. That is - as Scalia noted - the press was subject to laws against libel before the enactment of the First Amendment, and it was still subject to those same laws afterward. So the press can be regulated - but only with a light hand and with the soundest of justifications.
For example, there is no reason why the public should accept a single monopoly press; journalists have no right to expect that the Sherman AntiTrust Act does not apply in their business. And the unifying principle of “the MSM” is the Associated Press. Essentially every major journalism outlet is a member. The very word “associated” in its name should make the AP suspect, and Adam Smith’s analysis of monopoly
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)
applies very directly, since the AP “wire” is a virtual meeting of all its members which has been in continuous operation since before the Civil War. You have to be "naive as a babe to believe” that in over a century and a half journalists have never found common cause to the detriment of the public.
There is more than one analysis that suggests strongly that claiming objectivity for journalism is inappropriate. I put it to you that everyone knows that “If it bleeds, it leads” is sound advice for commercial viability in journalism. Certainly every journalist knows it. Journalism is negative - and any claim that "negativity is objectivity” should be dismissed out of hand as sheer cynicism. Another, more general and less pointed, argument is that no one can know that they are being objective. You can try to be objective. You can even say that you are trying to be objective - if indeed you are. But to claim that you actually are objective is to confess that you actually are not even trying to be objective. Because the effort to try must start from the assumption that might not be objective. Certainly it is arrogant to claim to possess a virtue, and claiming objectivity is no different from claiming wisdom or any classical virtue.
Journalism is negative towards society, but not towards government. In fact, anyone who is negative towards society must think “there oughta be a law” whenever they seen a failing of society. Thus, journalism inherently tends to cynicism towards society and naiveté towards government. In Common Sense, Thomas Paine asserted that society and government are often conflated but are in fact near opposites:
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil . . . - Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
I put it to you that "cynicism towards society and naiveté towards government” describes socialism to a tee. Whereas American conservatism holds, with the founders of the Constitution, that

skepticism towards society is sufficiently justified to be an adequate rationale for having a government, but

skepticism towards people in government is even more justified than skepticism towards people in society outside of government.

The conclusion of the matter is that journalists tend to “conspire against the public” by promoting socialism. And that the wire services generally, and the AP in particular, are the nexus of their conspiracy. And, I note, the raison d'être of the wire services was the conservation of expensive telegraphy bandwidth in the wide dissemination of the news. And in the 21^st Century, telegraphy bandwidth is dirt cheap.
There is such a thing as the AP Stylebook, which establishes standards for journalism. Some, perhaps most, of it is unexceptionable - for example, the “pyramid organization” of articles which demands that the most salient points of the article be articulated in the opening part of the article. But if the Stylebook proscriptions prevent the articulation of a particular political viewpoint - if for example it proscribes the term “illegal alien” to describe foreign citizens in the US without proper authorization - that is “a conspiracy against the public.” I doubt that the Stylebook explicitly proscribes the identification of the political party of a Democrat politician caught with his hands in the till, and requires it when a Republican is so charged - but “the MSM is notorious for exactly that sort of thing.
The AP should be prosecuted (or sued civilly) - and ruined. We don’t need it, and it is anticompetitive in the one industry - discussion of current events and politics - in which competition is most significant and necessary. The NY Times v. Sullivan ruling - in which SCOTUS made it very difficult for “public figures” to sue for libel - must be overturned. It is famously said that a law against sleeping under bridges is not neutral because it forbids both rich and poor from doing it. Just so, a ruling which makes it extremely difficult for Democrats - who essentially are never libeled - to sue, while doing “the same thing” to Republicans, who get libeled continually, is utterly unfair.

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