Posted on 05/20/2018 7:42:53 AM PDT by Maceman
A CNN poll last week showed that most Americans think Barack Obama was a better president than Donald Trump has been. The margin was huge: 19 percentage points.
Trump supporters will yell “fake news,” but they’ll be wrong. Respondents to the same survey thought Hillary Clinton would have been a better president than Trump, but only by three percentage points. By comparison, she bested Trump in the 2016 popular vote by 2.1 percentage points.
The wide preference for Obama over Trump (and Clinton) has little relationship to public attitudes toward policies on taxes, health care or Iran policy. (Obama and Clinton are pretty well aligned on those.)
The explanation seems simpler: a respect for integrity. Obama had it, running a largely corruption-free administration. The Trump presidency, all 16 months of it, has been marked by lies, greed, ethical transgressions and criminal charges.
None of these offenses daunts the hardcore Trump base. But another 10 percent of the voters who cast ballots for him in 2016 are showing signs of being bothered, as suggested in an exquisite 15,000 word article last weekend on Trump voters in the Upper Midwest by the Washington Post’s Dan Balz. These voters, Democratic Congresswoman Cheri Bustos told Balz, were “Trump triers” who turned to him either because they were turned off by Clinton or wanted to shake things up. They expect a modicum of integrity.
They haven’t gotten it. It’s familiar territory worth reviewing. Trump has refused to divest his business holdings and relishes using his presidency to enhance them. The latest example came this week when it was reported that the Chinese government is lending a state-owned construction company $500 million to build an Indonesian theme park that features a Trump-branded hotel and golf course.
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator, Scott Pruitt, is the subject of 11 federal inquiries into his travel expenses, security practices and sweetheart condo deal with an energy lobbyist’s wife, among other things. Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, has become best known for arranging a $130,000 payoff to silence a porn star about a fling with Trump. The investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller into links between the Trump campaign and Russian meddling in the 2016 election has produced indictments or guilty pleas involving 19 people and three companies.
The Washington Post’s fact checker has counted 3,001 false or misleading presidential claims - so far. That’s an average of 6.5 per day.
Sure, some apologists rationalize, all politicians have scandals and lie. President Bill Clinton lied about sex, crossed an ethical line on fundraising and outrageously pardoned the criminal fugitive Marc Rich. An aide to President George W. Bush, Scooter Libby, lied to a grand jury to protect Vice President Dick Cheney. (Trump pardoned him in April.)
But the scale of Trump administration mendacity has no modern equivalent.
And yes, Obama misled people about whether they’d be able to keep their existing medical-insurance plans under his signature Obamacare health-care program.
But his supposed scandals were phony ones conjured by right-wing gunslingers.
Congressional Republicans whipped themselves into a froth over the “Fast and Furious” case involving a government action against Mexican drug cartels in which a federal agent was killed. A detailed investigation by Fortune magazine, not an Obama apologist, concluded that Republican accusations against Obama administration officials were “replete with distortions, errors, partial truths and even some outright lies.”
Another would-be scandal over charges that the Internal Revenue Service singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny fizzled out when the Treasury Department Inspector General, in the Trump administration, found that it was a canard.
There are legitimate debates over whether Trump or Obama deserve more credit for the strength of the economy, or which president would do better in a room alone with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.
There is no legitimate debate, however, about which one is more truthful or honest.
I thought old Al had assumed room temperature some time ago
Relatively corruption free?
Lois Lerner and Loretta Lynch and HilLIAR-Huma vehemently disagree
Is Hunt psychotic?
And yet; the economy, the military and the world political scene are all better than when Obozo where in charge.
Their control that this is real is that many dislike Hillary. Uh...all that means is that many who voted for Bozo dislike Hillary.
Real integrity. Spying on all enemies, foreign and domestic. If a domestic enemy was a problem, audit them via the IRS or a state tax agency. Yes. Integrity. Not.
Most corrupt politician ever. Barack Obama.
The alternate universes in which we reside are funny at first. From a certain standpoint, it is amusing to read this stuff until. . .
You realize just how alarming it is. If the left was merely spinning and downplaying the so called “phony scandals” it would be somewhat understandable. After all, it’s their guy and they have the natural inclination to defend him. But this goes far far beyond that. It is as if none of it ever was. Such thought discipline is something Orwell could not have imagined. As it turns out, Big Brother was a piker.
These so called “phony scandals” are a direct assault on our liberty. Using the levers of government (IRS, FBI, EPA, CIA, etc.) to subvert and destroy the political opposition is an outright declaration that the American Left is done with liberty and has gone full Soviet.
The irony? Once the left achieves full Soviet the first victim will be the free press. The first victims always are the useful idiots. The writer may well find himself at the end of a rope that he helped tie and throw over the tree. What am I saying, I’m sure as he takes his last breath, his thought will be what a great article he could have written on the need for rope control.
During the election a bunch of liberals claims Trump was a child and only Obama and Hitlery were adults. They still claim that after overwhelming evidence that both lost their freaking minds over the election.
The Emperors fool speaks.
These type people drank all the kool aid... man, they don’t know how ridiculous they are..
LOL! Delusion thy name is democrat.
WOW. I guess The President should reinstate Wednesday Rap night.
Go F yourselves MSM.
I would swear that is a Gilligan’s Island quote.
:^)
Just more okey-doke
“Albert’s” real first name is Mike.
I hope liberals are stupid enough to keep believing the spoon fed nonsense that cost them the last election. This article is a fine example.
A NATIONAL Poll last week showed most Americans think that people who work at CNN are all lying propagandists and should immediately be grabbed and drowned in a bucket of their own excrement. The margin was huge: 75 percentage points.
People have the Right to not do business with criminal frauds liars cheats swindlers.
BOYCOTT CNN and every media company like them and ANYONE who continues to advertise with them.
Yea, nothing says integrity like running guns to Mexican drug cartels, SOS using the state dept as a fundraiser for her foundation, and using the FBI, CIA, and NSA to spy on opposition during an election, while falsely accusing the other side of election impropriety.
“Polling cemeteries again?”
Worse. Polling CNN audiences.
Al Hunt has always been far left, why the WSJ hired and kept him is a question for the ages.
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