President Donald Trump has been in office for less than 11 months, and his approval rating is consistently lower than that of any president since polling began. The latest Gallup Poll places Trump’s approval rating at just 35 percent, and that shows a small rise from last weeks 33 percent. It may be fair to assume that Trump’s bombastic leadership style, and his tendency to lash out at his political enemies on Twitter, may be hurting the president’s approval rating. What is perhaps unexpected is a fall in the numbers of Americans who self-identify as Republicans.
According to CNN , 42 percent of American voters identified as Republicans before Donald Trump won last years presidential election. Since President Trump took office that number has shrunk to just 37 percent , meaning that one in eight Republicans has deserted the GOP since Trump won the presidential election. Newsweek postulates that the dip in Republican support is because Donald Trump is “scaring voters.” They also point out that support for the Democrats has held steady, so it doesn’t appear that GOP support is defecting to them.
The Independent is fierce in its criticism of President Trump, claiming that “in just 72 hours Donald Trump has undermined everything the Republican party once stood for.” They claim that “Donald Trump’s Republican Party has shown it has no principles, no morality, and no shame.” They point to Trump’s support for alleged sexual predator and pedophile Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate race, and allegedly shady dealing with Trump’s tax plans as examples of how far the Republican party has fallen under Donald Trump.
The Guardian claims that under Donald Trump, the Republican Party is “ morally and intellectually bankrupt .” Trump’s position on taxes and climate change, they argue, are “morally appalling and reject the available evidence and expert opinion.” They claim that 96 percent of economic experts from the Initiative on Global Markets agree that Trump’s tax plans will fail to grow the U.S. economy, 100 percent of those experts agreed that those planes would “substantially increase the national debt.” It is estimated that Trump’s tax cuts will increase the national debt by $1.5 trillion while making the richest one percent considerably richer.
Economists aren’t exactly big fans of current GOP tax plans https://t.co/B0jodtnv2v pic.twitter.com/4qqqzwsePd
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 21, 2017
While Trump used Twitter to support alleged child molester Roy Moore, the Hill points out that European officials believe that Trump has left Rex Tillerson, Trump’s secretary of state, without a mandate as he heads off to Europe for negotiations with the EU and NATO.
Of course, Trump’s troubles do not end there. As recently reported by the Inquisitr , special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump election campaigns alleged collusion with Russia to influence the outcome of the presidential election is far from complete. President Trump’s former national security advisor, General Michael Flynn, last week entered a guilty plea to a charge of lying to the FBI and is believed to be cooperating with the Mueller investigation.
That investigation is now believed to be right at the very heart of the Trump administration, and there is considerable speculation that Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, may be indicted in the coming weeks. The Independent concludes its article by saying that in the course of a single weekend, “the Republican Party was able to shake the foundations of American democracy and completely ruin its brand.” They argue that Donald Trump has finally drained the Washington swamp and replaced it with a political sewer.