This week’s White House Report Card finds President Trump whipsawed on the issue of immigration, at one point working for legislation and by the end of the week calling the effort a waste of time.
Our conservative grader Jed Babbin also noted the president’s promising hope for a “Space Force,” which will likely go nowhere in Congress. But, he added, even in a crummy week, Trump approval rating is on par with former President Barack Obama at this point of his presidency. See this Zogby survey.
It’s shameful that dems and the media exploited this photo of a little girl to push their agenda. She was not separated from her mom. The separation here is from the facts. Dems should join POTUS and fix our broken immigration system. #ChangetheLawshttps://t.co/Y6KrTp4Ulk
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) June 22, 2018
Democratic pollster John Zogby, our other grader, was on travel this week.
Jed Babbin
President Trump had another of those week’s he’d probably like to take a mulligan on. Public outcry (fueled hourly by the media) at the issue of immigrant children being separated from their parents caused the president to issue a probably unconstitutional executive order to change it, the House and Senate both failed to do their jobs on immigration again, and the president ordered the Pentagon to create a new “space force,” an idea whose time has not yet come and probably never will.
Criticism of Trump over the child separation issue grew to such a crescendo by mid-week that the president did what he (justly) criticized Obama for: he signed a presidential executive order to end the practice. The problem is a court settlement by the Obama justice department that created the practice, which Trump hasn’t the power to change unilaterally. Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer promised to never work with Trump on any immigration deal. The House, as usual, can’t get its act together on immigration. The House failed to pass a relatively conservative bill on Thursday and punted the issue until next week.
The Senate killed a $15 billion rescission bill that would have reduced federal spending by that amount this year (truly trivial compared to the $1.3 trillion budget passed earlier). Thanks to the defections of two “Republicans,” and lockstep votes by Dems, the bill failed.
On Monday the president ordered the formation of the new space force, a sixth branch of the military he said would be separate from but equal to the Air Force. The Pentagon can’t do that, obviously, without authorizing congressional legislation. Defense Secretary James Mattis and all the warfighters are against the idea. The Air Force has about 320,000 active duty members and a budget over $150 billion. There’s no way Congress is going to be willing to add to the defense budget another chunk of money anything close to that. Heck, it probably wouldn’t be enough for even one Death Star.
It is hard to believe that the historic North Korea / Kim Jong Un summit was exactly one week ago. Truly amazing to see the lengths the left / the media will go through to change the narrative. pic.twitter.com/ct7u11YBDq
— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) June 20, 2018
The worst news of the week is in the fact that the trade wars Trump is kicking off with China and Europe are quickly picking up speed. Both China and the European Union imposed tariffs on U.S. goods in response to Trump’s tariffs, as did Canada. Trump threatened adding tariffs on another $200 billion of Chinese goods and even 20 percent on car imports. Damages to the U.S. economy will ripple across the country quickly. Contrary to what the president says, trade wars aren’t easy to win. Right now, the U.S. economy is booming. Why slow it down with trade wars?
All these substantive issues clearly don’t matter much to the polls. The president is now as popular as Obama was at this stage of his presidency and more people believe the country is heading in the right direction than pollsters have reported since 2005. Go figure.
Grade D+
Jed Babbin is an Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in 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 latest book is We are Many, We are One: Neo-Tribes and Tribal Analytics in 21st Century America. Follow him on Twitter @TheJohnZogby
