AUSTIN, Texas — For 20 minutes, President Trump led a metaphorical victory lap in front of thousands of Texas farmers, detailing the benefits of the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement for agriculture and the impact of a recently signed agreement with China.
“My administration is fighting for the American farmer and has been fighting for the farmer and the rancher every single day. And together, we’ve achieved something truly stunning,” he said to whoops and cheers in a cavernous conference hall dotted with cowboy hats.
Air Force One had traveled more than 1,000 miles out of its way on a Sunday evening to carry Trump from Palm Beach, Florida, to Texas, before returning to Washington after a Mar-a-Lago weekend.
At the 20-minute mark, he interrupted his list of policy victories, bringing up events on Capitol Hill.
“We’re achieving what no administration has ever achieved before,” he said. “And what do I get out of it? Tell me. I get impeached!”
The line brought the biggest cheer of the night from an overwhelmingly supportive audience, revealing the White House’s public relations strategy for beating impeachment in the court of public opinion. For a while, senators were resuming their deliberations, and the president embarked on a string of public appearances designed to show that his administration is hard at work delivering on promises and tackling the issues that matter to voters.
There was the China deal signed in the East Room a fortnight ago when Trump surrounded himself with chief executives. By the time you read this, he may have put pen to paper and inked the new North American trade deal into law. And to underscore his productivity, he spent two days last week rubbing shoulders with world leaders, business titans, and charity leaders at the annual get-together of the megarich and megamotivated in the alpine resort of Davos.
At times, the president’s Twitter feed has suggested he’s distracted by impeachment. “Read the transcript,” read one message posted while he was in Davos.
But at other times, he’s managed to stay on message, telling an interviewer that he couldn’t watch much of the first day of the trial proper, his schedule being too full.
“I had a busy day yesterday, as you know,” he said in a CNBC interview. “You were there. And we had the speech, and we had lots of meetings with different leaders, including Pakistan and others.”
With a Senate acquittal all but assured by the Republican majority, the real battle is one of perception. Trump’s aides are intent on portraying a president hard at work.
“Real Americans, people that don’t live in Washington, don’t care about the impeachment hoax,” said a senior administration official. “They are thinking about their 401(k)s and their investments, how to pay for college for their kids. The president is showing that he is in tune with them better than the people who want to waste time in Congress.”
The president’s press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, said there was more work to be done after the two trade deals. “The president has been working hard for this country while this impeachment charade has been dragged out by the Dems, and that will not change,” she said.
The latest polls suggest it could be a profitable way to navigate the political storm before November’s election, even if some of the headline numbers are not favorable.
Take a CNN poll published last week, a day before the trial got underway. News reports focused on the majority of respondents who supported a Senate vote to remove the president from office — at 51% to 45%. Some two-thirds said they supported moves to allow witnesses to appear.
Those figures don’t sound good for Trump or the Republicans trying to hurry the impeachment trial through the Senate as fast as possible to acquittal and a victorious State of the Union appearance on Feb. 4.
Yet other numbers offer a more attractive picture. Despite the best efforts of Trump’s media critics, his job approval rating is running at 43%. Although that might not be stellar, it marks his highest rating by this particular poll in almost three years.
More importantly, some 55% of voters approve of his handling of the economy, the best result of his presidency.
And, as Trump’s pollsters frequently point out, surveys such as CNN’s that look at the adult population, rather than likely voters, tend to underestimate support for the president systematically.
So expect more economic announcements and trade talks from a White House and president thinking that much of America remains unmoved by politicking on Capitol Hill.
