Posted on 08/24/2017 10:12:40 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
He sticks to poll numbers here instead of riffing, Don-Lemon-like, about whether he personally believes Trump is a few fries short of a Happy Meal, but the takeaway is the same. CNN now considers the president’s mental health — or, if you want to be generous, the public’s perception of the president’s mental health — to be very much a newsworthy topic. Given these numbers, maybe it is!
This probably won’t put an end to the “CNN sucks” chants at Trump’s rallies, though. Mike Shields, a former chief of staff at the RNC, warned Lemon last night that telling Trump fans their man is literally crazy isn’t the most effective way to get through to them. Just the opposite. The nastier the media criticism gets, the more Trump benefits — in theory:
This is almost what he wants to see happen is that he criticizes the media and the media themselves are unhinged and start calling the president insane. I think that’s a huge mistake. I think it’s a mistake not to call the protesters ‘left wing protesters’ that are in Arizona right now fighting the police, I think that’s a mistake, as well.
I think if you could do those things, not call the president insane and just fact check him, and call the protesters out for who you are, you gain the credibility ground that you need to push back on the president when he gives a speech like this. But you’re almost doing his work for him when we start calling him insane. That’s the first comment I have to make about that.”
I say “in theory” because it’s hard not to look at a poll like the one below and think that even Republicans are starting to side-eye each other about Trump’s behavior. Tony Fabrizio, the pollster responsible, worked for Trump’s campaign last year and does his best to put a rosy spin on it. But let’s be real: A newly elected president should be doing way, way better than 50 percent among his own party’s voters in a hypothetical primary. What Fabrizio’s telling you here is that Trump can’t even command a majority of the GOP to say he deserves a second term in a fully open field:
@POTUS crushing a hypothetical GOP primary field. So much for the “buyer’s remorse” the DC insiders are convinced the GOP has. pic.twitter.com/y4fL2wY12Z
— Tony Fabrizio (@TonyFabrizioGOP) August 23, 2017
The point isn’t that he’s at risk of losing a primary. He isn’t. The point is that about a quarter of the party prefers another candidate and another quarter of the party is undecided. Coincidentally, Morning Consult has a new poll out today showing Trump at 73 percent approval among Republicans. Around a quarter of the party won’t say that they approve of his performance in that survey either. That’s a lot of people on your own side to have wavering.
Here’s the Tapper clip, via the Free Beacon. Honestly, I don’t know how this criticism can continue to build this way over the course of four years. If we’re at this point already seven months in, with some CNN anchors appealing directly to Trump through the camera to chill out and others openly questioning whether he’s a nutjob, where will we be a year from now? Will Tapper be broadcasting in a “25th Amendment” shirt? Exit question: It’s probably a bad sign when North Korea is calling your leader “weird,” huh?
Real men don’t sound like whiny little girls, dude.
He’s only freaking out Lefties, and Lefties aren’t really Americans anyway.
Flake Jake Tapper is the one freaking out.
A notice to jake tapper and CNN: Quit trying to start a civil war.
Your health and well-being depends on it.
Come on now, Jake - perfectly unassuming Americans have awakened of late to find ourselves described as Nazi White Supremacists. We're routinely vilified in the media for holding opposing political beliefs, attacked on the street, and targeted for oppressive revenge legislation on the part of people who openly hate us, and told time and time again in the media that our viewpoint is illegitimate and our ability to express it is to be formally curtailed, and that our very act of drawing breath is impossibly oppressive. That's going to leave a mark on the old psyche.
This is a classical case of projection. Who is in better touch with reality? Remember the Republicans will never nominate Trump for president.
I watched Don Lemon’s laughable show the night of the Phoenix Trump rally, wanted to see the Rat reaction after Mr. Roo Roo and I came home from the rally.
The long grim faces on Lemon and his panel of fourth-string back-benchers was priceless!!! They heard all the booing of the fake news media during the rally, the boos were overwhelming and deafening. I think at least twice our boos evolved into very loud sustained “CNN SUCKS!” chants. It was awesome!! :0)
Well, he does freak me out at times. He’s too easy on Dems and RINOs for one thing. He should be announcing that he’s going to support good primary opponents for every RINO, for example. Plus, he should have declared Antifa a terrorist organization months ago.
So yeah, he does freak me out a little. /Sarc
He is certainly freaking the reprobates in the press out.
It’s Jake from State Farm, wearing khakis, and projecting...
He’s freaking out the media, he lives in your head.
“Propaganda Media” is a more apt term for these Progressive movement spokesmen/women than the over-used “fake news.”
At least if Jake went to State Farm he’d have a real job.
Jake Tapper to Trump? Guess he’s got a vivid imagination:-)
If CNN were actually paying any attention to the public’s perception of anything,they probably wouldn’t still be on the air,would they?
Not “freaking” me out... but I love watching him freak you out!
STE=Q
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