Our weekly White House Report Card finds President Trump ending a second week fighting for his thin reelection chances amid mounting evidence that it will be difficult to overcome Joe Biden’s margin of victory in ballot recounts.
Conservative analyst Jed Babbin graded a C- and suggested that Trump and his supporters are “hanging by the thread.” Democratic pollster John Zogby, whose surveys said Biden would win 49%-43%, said Trump was acting like a “big baby” and should concede.
Jed Babbin
Grade C-
Trump had a so-so week, withstanding media clamoring for his concession in the election, his unexplained firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and the news of a coronavirus vaccine that is 90% effective.
Trump hasn’t conceded the election despite near-overwhelming calls by the media and Democrats that he do so. Die-hard Trumpers are still hanging by the thread of recounts and missed calls by the media on Joe Biden’s possible win in Arizona. The best Republicans can hope for now is to hold control of the Senate after the Jan. 5 Georgia runoffs.
Firing Esper was a typical Trump move, apparently punishing him for a perceived lack of loyalty. This summer, Esper hadn’t backed Trump on the use of federal troops to put down riots under the Insurrection Act. Trump may also have been mad that Esper wasn’t as outspoken for his reelection as some Cabinet members. The firing was a petty and meaningless action.
The Pfizer vaccine may be approved by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use (whatever that means) by the end of the month. Biden, whose advisers are talking about another 4-6 week shutdown of the economy, will take credit for the vaccine when it is finally available to all of us.
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham is already promoting a Trump reelection campaign in 2024, the thought of which makes a lot of Republicans shudder.
John Zogby
Grade F
News flash: President Trump loses bid for reelection.
One new poll says that 80% agree with this, and only 3% think that Trump won reelection. It appears that there is no competing reality here. I guess a fact becomes a fact if a candidate wins more than 50% of the popular vote, wins 306-232 in the Electoral College, and 80% of the public agree that is what happened. Meanwhile, messages from world leaders coming into the State Department are sitting there because no one there has gotten the message.
In the midst of a worsening COVID-19 crisis, Joe Biden, the president-elect, cannot talk to the nation’s leading infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci. And the president’s fellow Republicans are still not willing to accept defeat — all because the leader of the world’s great superpower is just a big baby. In Shakespeare’s account of Marc Antony’s eulogy: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” So too with America’s Caesar-wannabe. In his term, Trump engineered major bipartisan criminal justice reform, set records for new jobs created and for reducing unemployment for minorities, spent record amounts to combat the opioid crisis, and forced European allies to pay more for their own security. But he may very well be remembered as a sore loser who risked national security because he could not accept the will of the voters.
Former President Warren G. Harding was the only president with enough guts to speak out against lynching — but he is remembered as a failure who played cards with his cronies who tried to steal this country blind.
Mr. President, it is time to think about your legacy and being a role model. Right now, you are not.
Jed Babbin is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on Twitter @jedbabbin
John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Poll and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His weekly podcast with son and partner Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Follow him on Twitter @TheJohnZogby
