THE MONTH
Is there absolutely anything associated with Trump’s
Washington that is not completely stuck, or in reverse? When you consider the two major themes of the
month – life in post-Mueller Washington and Trump’s foreign policy initiatives
– there is no discernible sign of constructive movement, anywhere. Domestically, one sure sign of stagnation is
when the fastest moving entity is the court system, and that is where we are
right now. The likelihood of significant
legislation (e.g., infrastructure, drug prices) moving through Congress is, at
this point, laughable. And the global
scene is even more disturbing, with backsliding in every area of Trump
focus: China, North Korea, Iran and
Israel. Everything Trump touches overseas is destabilizing, and the potential consequences of an angry Trump are dire. (We are into June now, and Mexico is on the plate as well.)
With respect to Mueller, last month we identified six
separate threads spawned by the release of the report. Consider the “progress” on each:
· The
quest for the unredacted report: The
full report remains unreleased, as Attorney General William Barr refused o comply with a congressional subpoena.
· Barr’s
behavior. Barr
refused to testify to the House Judiciary committee after failing to strike a
deal that would allow him to testify. Barr now faces a contempt vote by the full
House (as does former White House Counsel Don McGahn) and there will be no more
testimony from him. After the contempt
vote, the House could go to court to seek enforcement of its subpoenas.
· Democratic
investigations. These
have collectively ground to a halt in the face of the Trump White House’s
refusal to cooperate. Apart from the
unredacted Mueller Report drama, the main action has been in the courts, where
the Trump administration lost two cases in federal court. The first allowed Deutsche Bank and Capital
One to provide Trump business financial records to the House Financial Services
and Intelligence committees, and the other allowing a Trump accounting firm to
hand over records to the House Oversight and Reform Committee. But Trump’s lawyers are likely to appeal both
cases and the investigations will continue to move along at an agonizingly slow
pace.
· Trump’s
War on Congress. Essentially,
the Trump Administration has declared that the concept of “congressional
oversight” is no longer operative, and so the courts are not simply ruling on
the fate of investigations, but will be resolving a full-blown constitutional
crisis – which the Supreme Court will, at some point, decide.
· The 14
on-going investigations. These
continue, out of the public eye.
· The
impeachment question. This
one shows some movement, complete with a scorecard. As of the month’s end, there were 59 members
of the House (including one Republican) who are calling for impeachment
proceedings. Nancy Pelosi’s go-slow strategy
is not threatened at this level, but if that number continues to grow and
reaches, say, 100 reps, getting close to half of the Democratic caucus, things
could get interesting.
The
big news of the month was that Robert Mueller actually stood before a
microphone to discuss his own report.
What went largely unnoticed is that Mueller more or less read sections of his own report. Since so few citizens or, apparently, government
officials have actually read the report, his comments made news. He was certainly definitive, in both the
report and in his spoken words, but those conclusions were maddeningly bathed
in the fog of legalese that doomed a reading by the public and left the
high-level interpretation to a gleeful and savvy William Barr.
This
is what Mueller said out loud: “If we had
had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have
said so. We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president
did commit a crime…. {the report} explains that under longstanding {Justice} department
policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in
office. That is unconstitutional. Even
if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that, too, is
prohibited….The department’s written opinion …says that the Constitution
requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a
sitting president of wrongdoing.”
This is a translation for the common citizen: “Trump might
have committed the crime of obstruction.
I can’t clear him of it. But by
Department of Justice policy, I’m not allowed to indict him. The only course of action is for Congress to
consider impeachment. And I’ve laid out
the evidence if they choose to take that step.”
This is, of course, a long way from saying that there was “No
Collusion, No Obstruction,” the bumper sticker the Trump is touting based on
Barr’s misleading summary. If you
actually read the document, the evidence supporting an obstruction charge is
laid out in detail, and seems overwhelming.
But Mueller not only said nothing new, he indicated that was
his last word on the subject – no questions, no congressional testimony,
nothing. Another dead end in Washington,
and with so much at stake, such a dense report to absorb, so much to clarify, with
so little understanding, it is remarkable that Robert Mueller believes that his
report is sufficient. Another “no deal”
in a dead end town.
The Trump foreign policy agenda reached a new low this month,
regressing to the point of failure, to wit:
· The vaunted China trade negotiations failed,
and the administration is now on the verge of imposing a 25% tariff on Chinese
goods. Why Trump felt that a dictator
for life, used to playing the long game, might buckle to a man who will likely
be out of office in less than two years is beyond me. No
deal.
· North Korea resumed missile testing, and is
farther away from the negotiating table than the minimum range of an ICBM. No
deal.
· The long-awaited Jared-Kushner-Saves-the-World
plan to bring peace to the Middle East took yet another blow when Bibi
Netanyahu failed to put together a coalition government in Israel. No
deal.
· When Trump hired John Bolton to be his National
Security Advisor, what did he expect? He
surely knew that it would not increase his odds of getting the Nobel Peace
Prize. Bolton is agitating for a war
with Iran now, jumping all over some flimsy photographic evidence with the zeal
of Dick Cheney touting Curveball, the low level Iraqi engineer who was
basically the single source of the “Saddam Hussein has WMD” charge. Trump himself has no interest in such a war,
and found himself in public conflict with his own team. No, uh,
policy.
What is going right for Trump? Just one thing: the economy.
The latest GDP figures confirmed 3.1% growth in the first quarter, and
the economy added 263,000 jobs. Why
Trump does not just shut up about everything else and talk up the economy is
beyond me.
TRUMP APPROVAL RATING
Trump might not be doing much, but the base still loves
it. Trump’s approval rating inched up +1
point in the month of May to 43%, his highest since September (but basically
still flat-lined in the same range it has occupied since his second month in
office, the high-30’s to the low-40’s).
Winning reelection will be remarkably difficult for Trump with 54% of
the country against him, but he has shown little interest in broadening his
appeal.
TRUMP MONTHLY APPROVAL RATING
|
|||||||||||
2017
|
2018
|
2019
|
|||||||||
Jan
|
Jun
|
Dec
|
Jan
|
Jun
|
Dec
|
Jan
|
Feb
|
Mar
|
Apr
|
May
|
|
Approve
|
45
|
40
|
39
|
41
|
42
|
43
|
42
|
41
|
42
|
42
|
43
|
Disapprove
|
44
|
55
|
56
|
55
|
53
|
53
|
54
|
55
|
54
|
54
|
54
|
Net
|
1
|
-15
|
-17
|
-13
|
-10
|
-10
|
-12
|
-14
|
-11
|
-12
|
-11
|
TRUMPOMETER
The “Trumpometer” basically held in May versus April,
dropping a single point from +20 to +19.
The unemployment rate dropped to 3.6%, consumer confidence rose and gas
prices fell. These positives were offset
by a huge drop in the Dow caused by Trump’s self-inflicted trade war with
China.
The +19 Trumpometer reading means that, on average, our
five economic measures are +19% higher than they were at the time of Trump’s
Inauguration, per the chart below (and with more explanation of methodology
below).
TRUMPOMETER
|
End
Clinton 1/20/2001
|
End
Bush 1/20/2009
|
End
Obama 1/20/2017 (Base = 0)
|
Trump 4/30/2019
|
Trump 5/31/2019
|
% Chg. Vs. Inaug. (+ = Better)
|
Trumpometer
|
25
|
-53
|
0
|
20
|
19
|
19%
|
Unemployment Rate
|
4.2
|
7.8
|
4.7
|
3.8
|
3.6
|
23%
|
Consumer Confidence
|
129
|
38
|
114
|
129
|
134
|
18%
|
Price of Gas
|
1.27
|
1.84
|
2.44
|
2.97
|
2.91
|
-19%
|
Dow Jones
|
10,588
|
8,281
|
19,732
|
26,593
|
24,815
|
26%
|
GDP
|
4.5
|
-6.2
|
2.1
|
3.2
|
3.1
|
48%
|
Notes
on methodology:
BTRTN calculates our
monthly approval ratings using an average of the four pollsters who conduct
daily or weekly approval rating polls: Gallup Rasmussen, Reuters/Ipsos and You
Gov/Economist. This provides consistent and accurate trending information and
does not muddy the waters by including infrequent pollsters. The outcome tends to mirror the RCP average
but, we believe, our method gives more precise trending.
For
the generic ballot (which is not polled in this post-election time period), we
take an average of the only two pollsters who conduct weekly generic ballot
polls, Reuters/Ipsos
and You Gov/Economist, again for trending consistency.
The Trumpometer aggregates a set of
economic indicators and compares the resulting index to that same set of
aggregated indicators at the time of the Trump Inaugural on January 20, 2017,
on an average percentage change basis... The basic idea is to demonstrate
whether the country is better off economically now versus when Trump took
office. The indicators are the unemployment rate, the Dow-Jones
Industrial Average, the Consumer Confidence Index, the price of gasoline, and
the GDP.
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