Of the many nicknames for Trump, “Teflon Don” was one of the apt originals:
Deluged by lawsuits and buried under indictments from four different jurisdictions, Trump is frequently called "Teflon Don" -- a nickname first used for mobster John Gotti -- by US headline writers.
However, I think that his “teflon” status is rapidly deteriorating. The latest polls shows he is crashing on a variety of issues and with general public opinion:
Please note that these polls were taken before the Senator Padilla incident. I don’t expect them to get any better for him.
Opinions about him in the rest of the world are plummeting:
Barely one-third of people polled across 24 countries say they have confidence in Donald Trump as a world leader, with most describing the US president as “arrogant” and “dangerous”, and relatively few as “honest”.
The survey of more than 28,000 people by the Pew Research Center also found that opinions of the US had worsened over the past year in more than half the countries polled – including falls of 20-plus points in Mexico, Sweden, Poland and Canada. In the UK, the figure had dropped from 54% to 50%.
Asked how much confidence they had in Trump to “do the right thing in world affairs”, just 34% of respondents across the two dozen countries expressed some degree of confidence in him, with 62% saying they had little or no confidence.
He’s been rejected by Canada, Mexico, Ukraine, Russia, and Israel, and he is increasingly viewed as weak and incompetent. The list goes on and on. Hell, even his bromance with Kim Jong Un of North Korea is on the rocks:
Trump recently penned a letter addressed to Kim in an effort to resume dialogue, North Korea-focused analysis site NK News reported, citing an "informed high-level source" familiar with the matter.
Multiple in-person attempts to deliver the letter were rebuffed, however, by North Korean diplomats based at the United Nations headquarters in New York, the source said.
And don’t even get me started with Elon’s dissing.
I propose that Trump is now suffering from the “Velcro Effect.” What is that?
The "Velcro effect" on opinions of others refers to the tendency for negative information or experiences related to a person or entity to "stick" and have a significant impact on how their opinions are formed and maintained.
Here's how it plays out:
- Focus on Negativity: People are more likely to remember and dwell on negative experiences and opinions, much like how Velcro catches and holds onto materials.
- Impact of Prior Reputation: A negative prior reputation can intensify how people perceive and attribute blame or responsibility during a crisis or negative situation, further damaging the opinion of the entity.
- Contrasted with the Halo Effect: This is the opposite of the halo effect, where a positive prior reputation can create a favorable bias that protects against negative perceptions.
- Confirmation Bias: The Velcro effect is also related to confirmation bias, where people tend to seek out and favor information that confirms their existing beliefs, even negative ones, while ignoring or dismissing information that challenges those beliefs.
In essence, the Velcro effect highlights the power of negative information to disproportionately influence opinions and make it challenging for people to change their negative views, even in the face of contradictory evidence. (AI search)
We’ve also witnessed this happen in real time with Tesla. Once something sticks and stinks, it’s hard to get out of that hole. Fortunately for us, he keeps on digging.
