Thursday, February 20, 2025

The Wheels On The Bus Are Coming Off

 The best I can figure:

Trump’s approval ratings are dropping steadily across multiple polls. A new WaPo poll shows that only 45% of Americans now approve of his job performance while 53% disapprove. 57% believe that Trump has been exceeded his constitutional authority as president. 62% said Trump is not “honest and trustworthy.” 
… The WaPo poll shows that only 34% approve of what Elon Musk has been doing, 49% disapprove, and 14% say they aren’t sure. A whopping 63% are concerned about DOGE getting access to sensitive personal data of individuals. 
… A Reuters/Ipsos poll has Trump’s approval at 44%, with 51% disapproving. Trump only had 41% disapproval a few weeks ago in the same poll. 
… 53% said they think the economy is on the wrong track, which is up from 43% a few weeks ago. Trump now has only a 39% approval from voters on how he has handled the economy so far. 
… The Quinnipiac Poll has Trump’s approval at 45%, Disapprove 49%. 
… The CNN poll has Trump’s approval at 47% with 52% disapproving. 
… The WaPo poll shows the American people against Trump’s pardons for violent J6 defendants 83%-14%.
He's confused the percentage against his J6 pardons with approval of his nascent second Presidency. Or he’s just a delusional old man. The Constitution is sure:
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
There is some commentary at that site:
By its terms, the Twenty-Second Amendment bars only the election of two-term Presidents, and this prohibition would not prevent someone who had twice been elected President from succeeding to the office after having been elected or appointed Vice President. Broader language providing that no such person shall be chosen or serve as President . . . or be eligible to hold the office was rejected in favor of the Twenty-Second Amendment’s ban merely on election. Whether a two-term President could be elected or appointed Vice President depends upon the meaning of the Twelfth Amendment, which provides that no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President. Is someone prohibited by the Twenty-Second Amendment from being elected to the office of President thereby constitutionally ineligible to the office? Note also that neither Amendment addresses the eligibility of a former two-term President to serve as Speaker of the House or as one of the other officers who could serve as President through operation of the Succession Act.
None of that applies to Trump. He is squarely within the first section. I think he’s just trolling, for the attention. But the 22nd is self-actuating, unlike any portion of the 14th. What “due process and equal protection of the law” is, has to be up to the courts. Section 3 is no exception. But the 22nd is clear on this point. And the states, which allow candidates on their ballots by their laws, can refuse to violate the 22nd.

It would only take a handful, and Trump is a third-party candidate without access to all 50 states. If he even wants to try.
There are 10.  Get him to name the 5 in the acronym. Energy has gone up since Trump took office. Eggs are up because of scarcity, due to bird flu. Coffee is up because of a drought in Brazil. Energy costs have nothing to do with it. No wonder he can’t fix it. He doesn’t know what the problem is. Sure. Why not? What could go wrong?😑  So we don’t want to help Ukraine, but we do want to overthrow the government of Panama?
My way of saying that is never going to happen. Mostly because:
… After the broad outline of the House Republican budget came out, Mike Johnson is discovering that many Republican voters - especially in the south, are on government assistance. Especially Medicaid. 8 Republicans signed a letter to Johnson imploring him not to slash Medicaid, SNAP, and Pell Grants as planned. These are Reps Gonzales, Malliotakis, De La Cruz, Valadao, Ciscomani, Bresnahan, Moylan and King-Hinds. 
… Rep. David Valadao (R-CA): “I don’t know where they’re going to get the cuts.” 
… Sen. Tammy Baldwin: "Last night, the president said, 'I'm not touching Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, VA, I'm not touching them.' But this morning, he endorsed the House budget resolution which paves the way for massive cuts to Medicaid." 
… Jasmine Crockett to CNN: "Alabama, who's broke. Louisiana, who's broke. I can go through pretty much the entire south and tell you that they're broke and rely on a lot of welfare from the government. To be perfectly honest, they are supported by dollars from these big blue states. We're in the find out phase." 
… Rep. Jake Auchincloss: “Medicaid cuts are in the budget resolution. They are coming this month, $888 billion of Medicaid cuts. I know why Trump wants to do it. He's got to pay for the tax cuts for the billionaires, but I don't know why someone like Rep. Sessions would vote for it. TX-17 has 100,000 people on Medicaid. The majority of them are children. And for every dollar that gets spent on their primary care visits, on their vaccinations, on their at home care for the elderly, the fed govt picks up $0.66. So who's going to pay for that? When you take out $888 billion out of Medicaid, what are you going to say to your constituents back home?”
8 Republicans. Johnson can’t lose more than 2. And the Freedom Caucus wants more draconian cuts. 

Meanwhile, the Commerce Secretary thinks DOGE can do it without Congress. Yeah, this is already not going the way they think it will.
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