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And maybe the US will learn again, that a great deal is something that people can rely on?
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The guy still has like ~35% approval ratings according to every poll there is, and that’s after weekly displays of outright corruption from him and his family, and “winning” the same war dozens of times already with no end in sight. The number hardly even budged YTD.

You’re telling me that this country is capable of learning?

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You say it like a 35% approval rating is a good thing. It is not.
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That a third or more still support him seems crazy to me.
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But it's an approval rating. Of the people surveyed. Who chose to reply.

A lot of extrapolations are made out of the 10 people who responded.

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You do not believe in statistics as a discipline?
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I don't think most polling qualifies as statistics, without providing info like selection criteria or number of respondents. Otherwise we'll walk right into another situation like when Trump won an election while polling in near last place.

Or maybe I want something a little more significant than "we asked around the newsroom, and 35% of fox news reporters approve of the current administration". Cool, thanks, but that's not helpful or even a useful datapoint.

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> I want something a little more significant than "we asked around the newsroom, and 35% of fox news reporters approve of the current administration". Cool, thanks, but that's not helpful or even a useful datapoint.

The state of the art (which confirms this ~35% approval number) is far more rigorous than that.

Start with a meta-review of historical accuracy and transparency, eg: https://www.natesilver.net/p/pollster-ratings-silver-bulleti...

Details on methodology and sample size can be Googled, eg: https://poll.qu.edu/methodology/ , https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/07/24/ev... , https://www.google.com/search?q=Marquette+University+Law+Sch..., etc.

Sample size is less important than you might think, due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_proportion_confidence...

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Still way too high.
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35% of US voters is all you need to be President and control the Senate, effectively controlling the US government.
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We'll see if that's true come the midterms. I have doubts Republicans can keep enough seats with that sort of approval, given it's much worse with independents, and the Republican candidates seem to be a lot weaker than their Democratic opponents in a number of key races, like Texas. Only thing I'm less sure of is the huge amount of Super PAC money Republicans have to spend on tight races.
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It is lowest in history in this point of presidency apart from Nixon, who resigned at this point. That 30-35% is the floor, which won’t budge, likely because the hard core Maga Republicans have nowhere to go in US two-party system - which would be not just a surrender of long-held political beliefs, but a complete social death as well. This does not mean that the core Maga is very happy either, but they hope the movement continues after Trump so they can finally get the full Christian Nationalist Fascism they so desire.

I doubt that is going to happen. Trump is going keep the strings behind the party, fucking everybody hard, until finally he dies or otherwise implodes. What is left of American democracy when that happens is a whole another thing.

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If you wanted a Russian puppet in the oval office, it would do exactly what Epstein's BFF Donald is doing. There are zero reasons to support anything Putin is doing (read: daily war crimes), however, the destruction from within in the US and EU is executed amazingly well.
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The 65 percent approval rating from GOP voters right now says no, they are happy with immigration, culture war nonsense and trade chaos. Red states and rural areas would need to be targeted specifically and even then all interviews indicate those voters won’t consider choosing the other side, most of that GOP opposition will at best just not vote.
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Thankfully 45% of people currently identify as independent so his approval among Republicans doesn't have the same impact you'd think it does.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-politi...

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That’s good news to hear but the analysis in that article points out that many of these are people who supported Trump the third time(possibly in a row), after the rape trial finished and all the evidence of the first Trump term - maybe can’t put them all in the same bin but independent voters in the USA are not into long term thinking from all appearances, a slight decrease in gas prices would sway them the other way.
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I understand how you feel I think you have to consider the lack of long term thinking is likely uniformly distributed among voters. Or said differently, if I read between the lines of what you're saying, I don't think dems are more capable of long term thinking. And even if they were, their failure modes are just as plentiful. Dems have failed to put forth a decent candidate in ages.

Speaking as an independent non-voter.

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Hey no love lost here for mainstream Democrats but we have a first past the post national and state systems.

see independent voters polling don’t matter in the electiona since you don’t vote. /s

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I'd vote if I could!

Some days I feel I could start a whole revolution against taxation without representation...

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Not in this administration.
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Not with 50%+ of the country supporting this administration.

Its the people that are the problem. These policies and politics will outcast Trump because middle Anerica and The South are filled with morons.

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Luckily he does not enjoy anywhere close to 50% support
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Disagree.

Leadership matters.

A different leader could take the country in a different direction - with the same voting base.

Eg an actual policy of isolationism instead of instigating multiple foreign conflicts.

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And isolationism, how is that doing for any country that tried it?
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If you understand isolationism with consistent non intervenism, then swiss has done pretty well. If you understand it as really shutting yourself off from the outside world with literally destroying bridges - then North Korea is not doing so well.
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More bigots than morons. I’m folding American exceptionalism into bigotry along with all the usual aspects.
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The real number has been stable, in the 30-35% range, since 2015. Show you can engage the issue seriously before calling most of the country morons.
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> It’s the people that are the problem. These policies and politics will outcast Trump because middle Anerica and The South are filled with morons.

What a sad and tired take. Trump won both the electoral and popular vote. Discounting the opinions of over half the country as morons is exactly the type of behavior that got him elected.

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As allegedly Stalin replied to a group of writers complaining that ordinary people do not understand culture, "I have no other people for you".
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> Not with 50%+ of the country supporting this administration

That's not even close to an accurate number now. There are many sources e.g. (1)

It's a shame that people mostly learn the hard way, and forget easily. But that's not the support now.

1)

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-approval-falls-33-low...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3fRIleMK-8

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> That's not even close to an accurate number now.

that wasn't even accurate on the day he got elected, considering a third of the country did not vote at all.

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Trump believes everything on this planet is zero sum, and the only way you can benefit is if the other party hurts. His entire history on this planet betrays this, where he is an unreliable scumbag to everyone he has ever dealt with, to the point where the guy couldn't find vendors or a bank outside of Russia to deal with him. And then Americans said "this is the guy we should put in charge".

It is a particularly interesting position when the US is trying to counter China. The only hope the US had was an alliances with other Western-style nations, but instead it has been nothing but attacks and diminishing.

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If only things were zero sum stick-in-bicycle meme decision making would benefit others
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> It is a particularly interesting position when the US is trying to counter China.

The US put countering China way behind on its priority list, below "owning the libs" and settling old scores. I am convinced that if the Iran decapitation had worked like Venezuela, which seems to have been what they expected, then Cuba would have been next.

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I am surprised the USA has not attacked Cuba yet. I am guessing the rundown on missile stocks has eliminated the possibility of a 100 percent air/navy campaign like they failed at in Iran.
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Why should they?

Cuba is completely insignificant beyond some ideological value.

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Why should they?

To get an easy win compared to Iran just before the midterms? Of course, it could end up in a mess, but it's a mess already anyway.

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They've been farming the Cuba thing since the boomers were children. Every election there are bitter Floridian descendants of Cuban exiles to court. It would be insane for them to permanently resolve the issue, and any actual resolution would inevitably be a disappointment to them.
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Russia doesn’t think so.
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Because of the ideological value
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Exactly. Cuba is a pain in the US politics since generations now. If Trump would solve it, that would boost him. But if it fails, with declared victory but significant partisan warfare afterwards - not so much.
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It is unfortunately that the choices didn't have counter China in the list. It was status quo or trump. I wasn't happy with either option there.
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And then greenland.
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Cuba doesn't have oil.

The point is to prop up Putin.

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> The point is to prop up Putin.

Attacking one of Russia's few allies and weapon suppliers is counterproductive to such a goal, even if higher oil prices also help the Russian state finances.

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This ill-conceived, Kegsbreath-run operation depleted weapons stocks, gave enormous levels of intel on its systems (which both Russia and China are loving), burned through hundreds of billions in spend, and made Ameirca look like an impotent pathetic joke.

Yes, the Iran operation 100% served Russia and China. It could not have gone better for them.

And of course it helped Russia make hundreds of billions more on oil. Win win win.

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> Yes, the Iran operation 100% served Russia and China. It could not have gone better for them.

China yes, Russia no.

> And of course it helped Russia make hundreds of billions more on oil. Win win win.

For this to be intentional, the USA would have needed to intend Hormuz to be closed, rather than surprised and upset by it.

(Not that it matters much, but estimates I see say about $50bn, which is closer to the destruction of Wildberries than it is to $100bn).

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I think it is equally likely that Benny convinced the administration to attack Iran, emboldened by the 'success' in Venezuela.
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If the goal of a presidency was to destroy the country one could not do a better job than trump.
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"The only hope the US had was an alliances with other Western-style nations"

Maybe Trump bets on his great relations with Putin and Kim instead.

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Negative sum, not zero sum.
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Pity that for such an obvious fact that even peasants like me can easily see, the "elite" European political leaders are still playing ostrich.
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No, not good for Canada. Free trade is optimal, even if its unilateral.

The EU should abolish their tariffs and let the clowns in the US do whatever they feel like.

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Nope, the EU should use the trade bazooka against the US.
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The trade bazooka was an empty threat. This is somewhat similar to the trillion dollar coin[1]. It's a tool used for negotiations, not a real thing. If the trade bazooka was real, wasn't this the best opportunity to use it? What else could it be saved for?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion-dollar_coin

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the trade bazooka was made to threaten china, not the US. its just conveniently placed at the moment
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You're not going to get free trade if it's unilateral, because you've then created an incentive for the other side to protect their own industries knowing you're not going to retaliate, while reaping the benefits of access to your market.
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Unilaterally not hitting you head against the wall is bad, because you remove the incentive for the other side to stop hitting their head against a wall?

> while reaping the benefits of access to your market.

Huh, what? Trade is a win-win situation: you and your people benefit from imports, too.

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