It’s well documented that President Trump lives by his polls. Now he could die by them too, says a GOP consultant. Tongue-in-cheek. We think.
A former spokesman for Sen. Ted Cruz said Tuesday that Trump should be on “24-hour suicide watch” because of his slumping poll numbers.
A new CNN poll shows that Trump’s approval rating has fallen six points since the end of his first 100 days, to a dismal 38 percent. Fifty-six percent of Americans disapprove of him. Only 59% of Republicans “strongly approve” of his performance, down 14 points since February. Sixty-three percent of American say they are not proud to have him as president, while 73% say they can’t trust most of what they hear from the White House.
“If I were a political consultant looking at a candidate who had these kind of numbers, I’d have him on 24-hour suicide watch,” said Rick Tyler, a former aide to Cruz. “These numbers are not good. They do not look recoverable.”
Over the weekend, the New York Times published a report that showed Vice President Mike Pence and other Republicans have quietly begun exploring challenges to Trump in the 2020 election. Trump decried the story over Twitter yesterday, claiming that his base was “bigger & stronger than ever before” — which his slide among Republicans directly refutes.
Overall, the CNN poll shows a majority of Americans — 59 percent — consider Trump’s first 200 days in office a failure.
“The administration and the vice president can complain about The New York Times story,” said Tyler, “but we wouldn’t have this story if the president’s poll numbers were in the mid-50s, high-50s, or low-60s. Instead, they’re in the 30s, and so everybody’s speculating. And then you have an active investigation, the Russia probe, which people are beginning to question.”
“Everybody’s positioning for any eventualities that might occur with this very unpredictable administration,” he concluded.
