FiveThirtyEight:
Trump May Be Even More Unpopular Than His Approval Rating Shows
Before the midterms, Trump’s favorability rating was statistically indistinguishable from Pence’s, and only Palin was rated less favorably. Following impeachment, Trump was even lower relative to the other Republicans we asked about. Not only is he the least popular president to run for reelection since Gerald Ford according to polls asking the standard presidential approval question, but in our measure, he is now also rated less favorably than his vice president. He’s also essentially tied with Palin for the least favorable Republican on our list, which is notable because when respondents are asked the traditional favorability question, Palin’s numbers are even lower than Trump’s — in 2016, an ABC News-Washington Post poll found that just 30 percent of the public had a favorable impression of the former governor.
In terms of how Trump’s support breaks down along party lines, we also broke out our favorability rankings by Democrats, Republicans and independents.1 There we saw some pretty stark divisions, like the ones you see in the standard presidential approval question. For instance, Democrats, not surprisingly, ranked Trump last and ranked McCain the highest. Likewise, Republicans ranked Trump highly, behind only Reagan in our December poll. But among independents, Trump’s position was perhaps more telling. This group, which is typically viewed as potential swing voters, ranked Trump at the bottom of the list — statistically tied with both Palin and Pence.
Jacqueline Alemany/WaPo:
Majority of black Americans say they believe Trump is a racist, new Post-Ipsos poll finds
REALITY CHECK: An overwhelming majority of black Americans believe President Trump is a racist, according to a new Washington Post-Ipsos poll of African Americans nationwide.
"More than 8 in 10 black Americans say they believe Trump is a racist and that he has made racism a bigger problem in the country," according to our colleagues Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Vanessa Williams, Dan Balz, and Scott Clement. And 9 in 10 disapprove of his job performance overall.
They still are strong with the misinformation:
Sean Illing/Vox:
“Flood the zone with shit”: How misinformation overwhelmed our democracy
The impeachment trial probably won’t change any minds. Here’s why.
No matter how President Trump’s impeachment trial plays out in the Senate, one thing is certain: Despite the incontrovertible facts at the center of the story, the process will change very few minds.
Regardless of how clear a case Democrats make, it seems likely that a majority of voters will remain confused and unsure about the details of Trump’s transgressions. No single version of the truth will be accepted.
This is a serious problem for our democratic culture. No amount of evidence, on virtually any topic, is likely to move public opinion one way or the other. We can attribute some of this to rank partisanship — some people simply refuse to acknowledge inconvenient facts about their own side.
But there’s another, equally vexing problem. We live in a media ecosystem that overwhelms people with information. Some of that information is accurate, some of it is bogus, and much of it is intentionally misleading. The result is a polity that has increasingly given up on finding out the truth. As Sabrina Tavernise and Aidan Gardiner put it in a New York Times piece, “people are numb and disoriented, struggling to discern what is real in a sea of slant, fake, and fact.” This is partly why an earth-shattering historical event like a president’s impeachment has done very little to move public opinion.
Politico:
Collins sentenced to 26 months for insider trading scheme
Former Rep. Chris Collins was sentenced to 26 months in prison for an insider trading scheme that led to his arrest and resignation from Congress.
The Western New York Republican pleaded guilty in October, accused of passing illicit stock tips to his son from the White House lawn during a Congressional picnic…
Collins, the first member of Congress to back Donald Trump for president, was charged in August 2018 with securities fraud, wire fraud and making false statements to FBI agents — part of an alleged scheme to share confidential information about an Australian biotech company whose board he sat on.
When he learned of the results of a failed trial for a multiple sclerosis drug, he called his son Cameron Collins to alert him — allowing the son and his fiancee’s father to unload Innate Immunotherapeutics stock before it tanked and avoid hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses.
WaPo:
Personal stories of the exodus from Christianity
In “Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church,” mostly Gen X and millennial writers describe their disillusionment with the faith of their youth and their departure from their religious communities. In a foreword, Frank Schaeffer, who in 2007 published a memoir of leaving evangelicalism, calls the thinning of the ranks “a generational exodus from toxic Christianity.” The essayists in the book — who include Carmen Maria Machado, (“Her Body and Other Parties,” “In the Dream House”), Garrard Conley (“Boy Erased”) and Linda Tirado (“Hand to Mouth”) — come from a variety of Christian backgrounds: Mormon, Catholic, mainline Protestant and evangelical. All grew up in schools, social circles, families or churches where religion took a conservative, if not an authoritarian, form. Some faced rejection because of their sexual orientation; some were abused; at least one was taught that black people and white people belonged to different species, and that the Earth was 6,000 years old.
Daniel Drezner/WaPo:
Trump’s trade-driven diplomacy won’t accomplish as much as he hopes
Wednesday’s news in economic statecraft was not transformative.
So, at best, the threat of sanctions did not undercut U.S. diplomacy. At worst, by talking to the news media about this, the Europeans are priming to say no the next time Trump tries this thundercracker of a stunt. And he is guaranteed to do that.
As for the China deal, the agreement seems more like a truce designed to not make things worse as the United States enters an election year. My Post colleague Heather Long points out: “From a short-term perspective, the deal doesn’t seem so great. China’s additional purchases make amends for only a fraction of the trade war’s hit to the economy, analysts say. And the bulk of the purchasing in the deal could have happened in the summer of 2018 without Trump ramping up tariffs.”
WaPo policy quiz:
Which of these 2020 Democrats agrees with you most?
Since we first published this guide in November, new candidates have joined the race and several others have dropped out. We have included everyone polling at least 1 percent in The Post’s national polling average. This new version adds questions on such topics as gun control and the criminal justice system.
Of course, policy stances are just one reason to pick a candidate. But if you haven’t been paying close attention to the campaign yet (and even if you have), this quiz can help clarify: What do you think? And which Democrats — if any — agree with you?
EJ Montini/Arizona Republic via USA Today:
How could senators possibly ignore the damning testimony of Lev 'Smoking Gun' Parnas?
Lev Parnas said on TV that the president is lying. That he knew exactly what was going on in Ukraine. So, put him on the witness stand.
“I don’t know those gentlemen,” Trump said in October about Parnas and Fruman, even though Trump and the men had been photographed together numerous times.
Parnas told Maddow, “He (Trump) lied. He knew exactly who we were.”
He also said, "Trump knew exactly what was going on.”
He said of his role in Ukraine that he “wouldn't do anything without consent of Rudy Giuliani or the president.”
He also said – and this would be incredibly difficult to refute – "Why would President Zelensky’s inner circle, or Minister Avakov, or all these people, or President Poroshenko, meet with me? Who am I? They were told to meet with me. And that’s the secret that they’re trying to keep. I was on the ground doing their work.”
They were all in on it, they were all in the loop: