Perceptions Of Biden And Views Of Trumps Future
About four-in-ten Americans now approve of Joe Bidens job performance as president, while 60% disapprove. Bidens approval rating is relatively unchanged from earlier in the summer and remains far lower than it was in the early months of his presidency.
Demographic patterns in Bidens approval rating also are little different than in recent months, with White adults, those without bachelors degrees and younger adults more likely than others to disapprove of Biden.
Majorities across all age groups disapprove of Biden, though his rating is somewhat more positive among adults 65 and older than among those in younger age groups. At the same time, older adults are more likely than younger adults to express strongly negative views of Biden: While 63% of adults under 30 disapprove of Bidens performance, just 32% say they strongly disapprove. Among those 65 and older, a smaller overall share disapproves , but 46% strongly disapprove.
A Total Failure: The Proud Boys Now Mock Trump
Members of the far-right group, who were among Donald Trumps staunchest fans, are calling him weak as more of them were charged for storming the U.S. Capitol.
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By Sheera Frenkel and Alan Feuer
After the presidential election last year, the Proud Boys, a far-right group, declared its undying loyalty to President Trump.
In a Nov. 8 post in a private channel of the messaging app Telegram, the group urged its followers to attend protests against an election that it said had been fraudulently stolen from Mr. Trump. Hail Emperor Trump, the Proud Boys wrote.
But by this week, the groups attitude toward Mr. Trump had changed. Trump will go down as a total failure, the Proud Boys said in the same Telegram channel on Monday.
As Mr. Trump departed the White House on Wednesday, the Proud Boys, once among his staunchest supporters, have also started leaving his side. In dozens of conversations on social media sites like Gab and Telegram, members of the group have begun calling Mr. Trump a shill and extraordinarily weak, according to messages reviewed by The New York Times. They have also urged supporters to stop attending rallies and protests held for Mr. Trump or the Republican Party.
Mr. Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment.
The Two Are Widely Seen In The Republican Party As Potential Rivals For The 2024 Presidential Nomination And Public Contrasts And Behind
Donald Trump put his full force behind Ron DeSantis in 2018, rallying with the GOP gubernatorial candidate in his home state of Florida. My great friend, Trump said. A tough, brilliant cookie.
Four years later, Trump has yet to endorse DeSantis as he seeks a second term and is unlikely to campaign for him, according to Trump advisers with knowledge of the former presidents intentions. The two men once spoke regularly, a close Trump adviser said, but, those days are gone. The two havent talked since early in the summer, people familiar with the matter said, and DeSantis has not asked Trump to campaign for him.
A favorite to win re-election, DeSantis is trying to assert his national influence, appealing to Trumps supporters and touring swing states to headline rallies for other Republicans on the ballot this fall, as he subtly distances himself from Trump in speeches, while not explicitly criticizing the ex-president.
Although neither has announced any firm decisions, Trump and DeSantis are widely seen in the Republican Party as potential rivals for the 2024 presidential nomination. The public contrasts and behind-the-scenes tensions reflect how formidable an emerging adversary the Florida governor has become to Trump, even as the 45th president polls far ahead of the pack in a hypothetical primary.
Trump recently polled a room of visitors at his Bedminster golf club about what they thought of DeSantis, according to a person present for the gathering.
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Trump Said He Could Declassify Documents With His Mind But He May Have Also Accidentally Admitted To Taking Them ‘intentionally’ Nyt Reporter Says
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Former President Donald Trump said Presidents could declassify documents “even by thinking about it.”
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Based on a previous interview, a political analyst says he may have “intended to send the boxes of materials.”
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Trump’s claim may go against the idea that documents ended up in his home accidentally.
CNN political analyst Maggie Haberman said former President Donald Trump may have inadvertently deviated from the narrative that classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago ended up there accidentally.
In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Trump made the unfounded claim that Presidents are able to declassify documents simply by “saying: ‘It’s declassified'” or “even by thinking about it.”
“Because you’re sending it to Mar-a-Lago, or to wherever you’re sending it,” Trump told Hannity on Wednesday. “You’re the president, you make that decision. So when you send it, it’s declassified. I declassified everything,” Trump added.
On a Friday episode of CNN New Day, Haberman fixated on Trump’s phrase “you’re sending it to Mar-a-Lago.”
She argued the statement “seemed to indicate that he had intended to send the boxes of materials to his private club and home. Whereas there has been this line from people around him that this was all an accident, things were just shipped out.”
“So they’ve tried leaning in on the idea that this was some kind of accident and just now he seemed to suggest that this was intentional,” Haberman added.
Read the original article on Business Insider
Punching Back At The Department Of Justice
The former president is currently involved in a legal tussle with federal authorities over a cache of classified documents that the FBI seized last month.
Government authorities say Mr Trump improperly took and stored White House documents, including some marked “top secret” at his Florida home – the Mar-a-Lago resort.
Federal prosecutors now say he may have obstructed the investigation into his possession of the documents.
Mr Trump has previously spun investigations and attacks against him as “witch hunts”, and it was no different on Saturday.
He came out swinging, calling the FBI’s search “the shameful raid and break-in on my home in Mar-a-Lago” a “travesty”.
The former president has long built his appeal by casting himself and his supporters as political outsiders and persecuted figures.
Mr Trump linked his personal legal troubles to his supporters’ political frustrations, claiming: “We are being assaulted⦠by the FBI and DOJ.”
“It was not just my home that was raided⦠it was the hopes and dreams of every citizen who I’ve been fighting for since the moment I came down the golden escalator in 2015, wanting to represent the people,” he added, drawing boos from the crowd.
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Nancy Mceldowney Former Director Of The Foreign Service Institute
Democrats generally understand they will need federal employees to implement their policies, though they may believe that those employees need to be liberated from rules, Light added. Republicans have the same hierarchy, but are motivated by a different goal. Both parties in the past have come in saying, Weve got an agenda weve got four years, maybe eight, so we cant wait for action.
In the Trump administration, Light noted, many may agree with Bannons concept of a deep state, but are uncomfortable with that language.
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon steps off Air Force One on April 9, 2017, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md.
Others are skeptical that many in Trumps circles actually buy into the notion of a deep state. If they had this theory of the deep state and were worried, the first thing they would do is appoint a lot of political appointees, said Donald Devine, who headed the Office of Personnel Management in the Reagan administration.
Norm Ornstein, a longtime observer of Washington at the American Enterprise Institute, is appalled at what he sees as Bannons promotion of a conspiracy theory of lawless people trying to undermine American values for their own warped sense and defying laws and property.
Chris Christie Mocks Disaster Donald Trump At Upstate Biz Conference
Former President Donald Trump claims he threatened to obliterate the co-founder of the Taliban if he stepped out of line and even sent him a photo of his house to prove he could.
Trump, 76, told Fox News Sean Hannity that he threatened Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar during 18 months of talks from the White House before his successor, President Biden, ordered the horrible withdrawal from Afghanistan.
I sent him a picture of his house, Trump insisted of the leader dubbed Baradar the Butcher, who is now deputy prime minister after the Taliban seized power.
He said, But why do you send me a picture of my house? I said, Youll have to figure that one out,’ Trump claimed in the second part of his sit-down interview, aired late Thursday.
I said, If you do anything, were going to hit you harder than any country has ever been hit.
He said, I understand, your excellency. He called me your excellency I dont know if he calls Biden that, he insisted.
Trump noted how he had wanted to get out of Afghanistan and had been the one to whittle the US presence down to very few soldiers.
We would have had a very similar schedule, but I would have taken the military out last, he insisted, saying he would also have not allowed $85 billion worth of the best military equipment in the world to be left behind.
Instead, Bidens horrible withdrawal led to 13 service members getting blown up in horrifying scenes of chaos at Kabul airport in August last year.
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Why Is Trump Openly Embracing Qanon Now
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Over the weekend, the New York Times and the Washington Post published lengthy articles on the threat to American democracy posed by election deniers and an increasingly unrepresentative electoral system. Both pieces were well worth reading, but they didnt focus on a more immediate threat to democratic values and the rule of law: Donald Trumps apparent attempts to publicly intimidate federal prosecutors who are investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his failure to return classified documents to the National Archives and Records Administration.
Whats going on? One possibility is that Trump has finally lost what remained of his judgment and gone full tilt to a place where many leading Democrats are Satan-worshipping pedophiles, the coronavirus is a Chinese bioweapon, and J.F.K., Jr., is alive. A more likely theory, put forward by the Posts Philip Bump, is that Trump is effectively asking QAnon to stand back and stand by for his 2024 election campaign, just as, during a September, 2020, Presidential debate, he asked the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by. That sounds plausible. But it seems at least equally possible that Trump is motivated by a more immediate concernthe multiple state and federal investigations of his conductand that hes signalling to prosecutors that he wont go quietly, so they had better beware.
H.H.: What kind of problems, Mr. President?
A Majority Of Republicans Want Trump To Stay In Politics About Four
Overall, roughly three-in-ten Americans say Donald Trump should remain a major national political figure, while two-thirds say he should not. However, there are wide partisan divides on this question. About six-in-ten Republicans and Republican leaners say the former president should continue to play a major role in national politics, while nearly all Democrats and Democratic leaners say he should not.
The share of Republicans saying Trump should continue to be a major national political figure has declined slightly since September 2021 .
The 63% of Republicans who would like to see Trump remain a major figure include 39% who would like to see Trump run for president himself in 2024. The remainder say while they would like Trump to remain a national political figure, they would prefer he use his position to support another presidential candidate that shares his views.
Although Republicans and Republican leaners generally say Trump should remain a major national political figure, there are demographic differences within the GOP on this question.
Moderate and liberal Republicans are less likely than conservative Republicans to say Trump should remain on the national political stage .
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Donald Devine Former Head Of The Office Of Personnel Management
During the Reagan transition, Elkins attended a meeting where political appointees spoke frankly about favoring industry, he told Government Executive. He was deeply committed to the programs mission, and the message from the new administration was disturbing. My first reaction was we cant lose this, Elkins said. But soon his thoughts turned to the 100 people who would lose their jobs at a time when he himself had two kids in college. He responded by setting up a clinic on resume writing. Soon most employees found jobs with the Navy or the Interior Department, where Elkins did a stint before eventually returning to EPA to work in other areas.
Burford feared the bureaucracy enough to compile an enemies list, recalled Elkins colleague Ed Hanley. He recalled being summoned by EPAs acting boss and handed a yellow buck slip with seven names, all career, with instructions that he should get on top of these people, or something vague and threatening like that, Hanley said.
It was left to Hanley to explain the limitations on firing career staff without cause. In the end, Burford signed off on some questionable personnel actions to get her people in, Hanley recalls, but ultimately Burford herself was fired and Reagan brought back the original EPA administrator William Ruckelshaus, whose tenure Hanley recalled as his best years at EPA.
We Don’t Have Anybody To Talk To Him
Trump said at a rally in Florence, South Carolina, on March 12 that the conflict is going to get worse.
“The fake news said my personality is going to get us into a war…but actually my personality is what kept us out of war,” Trump said.
“This could lead to World War III,” Trump continued. “I see what’s happening. Because if you think Putin is going to stop, it’s going to get worse and worse. He’s not going to accept it, and we don’t have anybody to talk to him. You had somebody to talk to him with me.”
But he also appeared to paint Putin a more positive light, saying: “It happens to be a man that is just driven, he’s driven to put it together.”
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Dont Put Anything In Writing
Theres little record of Trump owning a personal computer or writing emails. When running his business, his staff have described that he rarely put anything in writing or gave direct orders. Trumps former in-house lawyer Michael Cohen told Congress in 2019 that Trump spoke to him in code when he was giving him instructions about how to lie to Congress and Special Counsel Robert Mueller about Trump projects in Russia.
Being president meant more of Trumps actions and directives were recorded, even when he didnt want them to be. Trumps July 2019 phone call with Zelensky, for example, was documented by notetakers in the White House Situation Room, who routinely document conversations between Presidents and world leaders. Even though Trump denied there was anything wrong in the call, the notes describe Trump telling Zelensky, Theres a lot of talk about Bidens son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.
Trump once berated his White House counsel Don McGahn for taking notes during an Oval Office meeting about the Mueller investigation. Why do you take notes? Lawyers dont take notes. I never had a lawyer who took notes, Trump said. McGahn said he took notes because hes a real lawyer and it creates a record. Ive had a lot of great lawyers, like Roy Cohn. He did not take notes, Trump said.
Trump Says Capitol Attack ‘represented The Greatest Movement’
Former President Donald Trump on Thursday said the Jan. 6 Capitol attack “was not simply a protest, it represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again.”
Trump made the remark on his Truth Social platform, publishing it ahead of the first of six televised hearings by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot. He referred to the panel as the “Unselect Committee,” The Independent reports, and again falsely claimed that the election was rigged.
President Biden saying during a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the assault was a “flagrant violation of the Constitution. I think these guys and women broke the law, tried to turn around the result of an election. There’s a lot of questions, who’s responsible, who’s involved. I’m not going to make a judgement on that.”
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An Agenda With A Precedent
Indeed, President Reagans government is the problem theme had its heyday only three years after Democratic President Jimmy Carter had worked with Congress to enact the 1978 Civil Service Act, largely as an effort to professionalize government.
Devine, who ran personnel-related issues for Reagans transition team before becoming OPM director, recalls the scene in 1981 as one in which unions were threatening job actions, and either sitting with their arms folded or not showing up. Eventually, after federal air traffic controllers went on strike and Reagan fired them, those job actions stopped.
Most civil servants disliked Reagan. Devine, now a college professor, remembers an early speech on cutting bureaucracy he delivered to the American Society for Public Administration. It drew loud boos and multiple requests for printed copies. My dealings with the bureaucracy showed me their first priorities were maintaining the status quo in their agencies, and they were certainly not Republicans, he said.
The Reagan years, much like today, brought to Washington many appointees to run agencies charged with missions the appointees dont endorse. One such example is Anne Gorsuch Burford, Reagans Environmental Protection Agency administrator. In 1981, with Reagans blessing, she began implementing a 22 percent budget cut and slashed regulations. After a scandal surrounding the $1.6 billion hazardous waste superfund cleanup program, she was cited for contempt of Congress.