The poor jobs report this week, showing a record number out of work, coupled with President Obama’s anti-Trump rant, reinforced by the first lady Friday, resulted in a rare agreement by our White House report card graders John Zogby and Jed Babbin.
John Zogby
A lousy jobs report this week. Only 38,000 jobs created last month, the lowest number in years and much lower than the 150,000 expected. While the unemployment rate went down to 4.7 percent, less than half the rate when President Obama took office, a record number of Americans are out of work.
There were reports this week of an expected victory this year over ISIS in Fallujah and a probable victory in Mosul by the time Mr. Obama leaves office.
And the President’s poll numbers this week have been over 50 percent — 5 to 7 points higher than his disapproval rate.
Grade C
Jed Babbin
It seemed as if President Obama would have quiet week, but that possibility evaporated quickly on Wednesday in Elkhart, Indiana where even the Huffington Post said he was very unpopular. (The nearly $200 million that went to Indiana thanks to Obama’s 2009 “stimulus” bill apparently didn’t do much to stimulate the Hoosier State.) We’ve always known that Obama’s eloquence was totally teleprompter-dependent, but in Elkhart, Obama’s prompter wasn’t enough to prevent him from falling into a sputtering, stuttering spasm that lasted at least ten syllables when he tried to attack Donald Trump.
First lady Michelle Obama used her final commencement address to blast Donald Trump. AP Photo
Meanwhile, Team Obama accused a federal judge of spreading “fear and confusion” among illegal immigrants by requiring the administration to submit the names of nearly hundred-thousand of them who have already enrolled in the president’s deportation amnesty program. The DoJ lawyers told the court the administration wouldn’t obey his order and asked that the same judge cancel his requirement that thousands of Department of Justice lawyers attend special ethics classes. The judge imposed that sanction after having found that he had been intentionally and repeatedly misled by DoJ lawyers.
On the positive side, the Supreme Court whittled away at Obama’s “green” agenda by ruling that Obama’s new “wetlands” rule —which turns virtually all water larger than a puddle into federally-controlled “navigable waters” — can be challenged in court.
My Grade C-
John Zogby is the senior analyst for Zogby Analytics and author of “We Are Many, We Are One.” Follow him at @TheJohnZogby
Jed Babbin is an Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him @jedbabbin
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
