Cristina Silva at Newsweek:
Donald Trump's approval rating has reached the lowest point of his 11-month-long presidency, dropping to 32 percent this week as his embattled White House administration has shrugged off allegations of sexual assault, collusion with Russia and ineffective leadership. The president's disapproval rating was 63 percent in the Pew Research Center survey released Thursday, a new high for the survey.
The results mark Trump's lowest approval rating in any poll since he was sworn into office in January in front of a smaller than expected crowd. The Pew poll said Trump's approval rating had decreased from February, when he was at 39 percent. In October, the president saw a 34 percent approval rating. Meanwhile, just 59 percent said they disapproved of the former reality TV star in Pew’s October survey, the previous high mark for that measurement.
Rebecca Shapiro at The Huffington Post:
A new national Pew Research Center poll released Thursday shows that President Donald Trump’s approval rating is declining among demographic groups that previously gave him relatively high numbers, particularly among evangelicals.
According to Pew, Trump’s approval rating among white evangelical Protestants dropped 17 percentage points from February to December, down from 78 percent to 61 percent. Eighty-one percent of white evangelical voters backed Trump in the 2016 presidential election, NPR reported.
Though the decline was not as steep, Trump’s approval rating also dropped among adults 50 and older (from 47 percent to 38 percent) as well as among whites (49 percent to 41 percent). As Axios noted, Trump’s approval rating had either remained the same or dropped among every demographic group Pew polled.
The Los Angeles Times analyzes Trump’s attacks on the FBI and its investigation:
Following President Trump’s questionable lead, some congressional Republicans are trying to sow doubt about the integrity and impartiality of the FBI and the investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. That investigation already has resulted in an indictment of Trump’s former campaign chairman and a guilty plea by his first national security advisor, and it shows no sign of concluding.
On Thursday, four days after Trump tweeted that the FBI’s reputation was “in tatters,” Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte (R-Va.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told FBI Director Christopher A. Wray: “We cannot afford for the FBI — which has traditionally been dubbed the premier law enforcement agency in the world — to become tainted by politicization or the perception of a lack of even-handedness.”
True enough, but the question is whether such a perception is fair or the result of politically motivated exaggeration by the president and his supporters. So far the evidence points strongly in the latter direction. That comes as no surprise — the attacks on the FBI fit a clear pattern of misdirection and deflection by the Trump administration and its GOP allies on the issue of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Admiral James Stavridis, former Supreme Allied Commander at NATO gives his take on Mike Flynn’s fall:
Throughout my time in uniform with Mike, he was a determined, hard-edged and highly effective intelligence officer — the best ever to serve on my team personally, which he did in Afghanistan while I was the Supreme Allied Commander at NATO and the strategic commander for that mission. Both General Stan McChrystal — his immediate boss — and I would often comment on how lucky we were to have then Major General Mike Flynn on our team in combat from 2009–2010. How did he end up a convicted criminal, nationally disgraced, financially ruined and struggling to put his life together again? [...] Thus big money, a chance for real power and the ability to confront the nation’s enemies all came into play, creating someone who could leave many of us shaking our heads as he took the podium at the Republican National Convention and led chants of “lock her up.”
The Denver Post takes on the House passage of a concealed carry reciprocity law:
Such a measure sounds good in theory, but it opens up a race to the bottom, where if a state issues a permit to anyone who fills out a form online, they would be able to carry in a state like Colorado, where in-person training courses are required.
Colorado already has reciprocity with 33 other states, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. That means Colorado recognizes the permits issued in those states, and Colorado permits are recognized as legal in those states.
But Colorado has standards. There’s no agreement with Vermont, where no permit is required to carry a concealed gun.
At The Week, Paul Waldman details the coming attack on America’s social safety net:
[The Republican party has] an extraordinarily ambitious agenda, one that involves not just a bunch of discrete policy changes, but a fundamental remaking of American life. They're on their way to seeing it fulfilled, and they're about to get started on the most important piece of the puzzle.
The vision is one of an America that's more unequal and more cruel, where the wealthy and powerful accrue more wealth and power, and the rest of us find more obstacles in our way. In other words, "freedom."
Michelle Goldberg at The New York Times looks at the #MeToo movement:
[T]he revolution is smaller than it first appears. So far, it has been mostly confined to liberal-leaning sectors like entertainment, the media, academia, Silicon Valley and the Democratic Party. It hasn’t rocked the Republicans, corporate America or Wall Street — with some exceptions — because these realms are less responsive to feminist pressure.
Certainly, Fox News has jettisoned men exposed for egregious misconduct, like Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly. But the Fox Business anchor Charles Payne is back on the air despite a lawsuit from the former Fox pundit Scottie Nell Hughes, who claims that he raped her. Republicans are not lining up to demand the resignation of Blake Farenthold, the Texas congressman who recently agreed to pay back $84,000 in public money he used to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit by a former employee. Moore has the president’s support.
Then, of course, there’s Trump, who has been accused of sexual assault or harassment by over a dozen women, but has faced few consequences. His administration is hostile to sexual harassment victims; in March, for example, he reversed a 2014 Obama administration rule that made it harder for federal contractors to keep sexual harassment and discrimination cases secret.
On a final note, here’s Eugene Robinson’s take on the Trump investigation:
We need to prepare for the eventuality that the Mueller probe catches President Trump, family members and associates red-handed — and Republicans in Congress refuse to do anything about it.
This is beginning to look like a possible or even probable outcome. With a cravenness matched only by its arrogance, the GOP is Trump’s party now. It no longer has any claim to be Lincoln’s.