In this week’s White House Report Card, President Trump is licking his wounds inflicted by the Supreme Court and his former national security adviser John Bolton. But he has his eyes on a revived reelection campaign as he heads to Tulsa, Oklahoma, tonight for his first post-coronavirus rally.
Our graders, Democratic pollster John Zogby and conservative analyst Jed Babbin, agreed that the president had one of his worst weeks, which is saying a lot. Leading the hits were two losses in the Supreme Court and the Bolton book.
John Zogby
Grade F
More bad news about COVID-19 for the nation as President Trump defied his own aides, local Oklahoma officials, and common sense to host a campaign rally on Saturday in Tulsa. June 19 is “Juneteenth,” the celebration of the end of slavery in the United States, and black people are furious about the president’s rally just a day later.
Trump lost two major Supreme Court cases this week: one about ending civil rights protections for transgender persons and the other rejecting the administration’s efforts to deny rights to children of people who entered the U.S. illegally.
The new book from Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, portrayed the president in a very negative light — as in ignorant, narcissistic, ad incompetent. Trump has unleashed the Justice Department against Bolton and his publisher, and the war of words has continued. Whether anyone gets to read the book is less important right now than it is being talked about.
Another 1.5 million people in the U.S. applied for unemployment during the last week. And Trump’s approval rating is in the low 40s, and he is losing to Joe Biden by double digits nationwide and in six key battleground states.
Jed Babbin
Grade D-
It was another dismal week for Trump with two losses at the Supreme Court, a literary mugging by Bolton, and more unkept promises to clear out the protester-occupied zone in Seattle.
The Supreme Court rewrote an anti-discrimination in hiring law to include the gay and transgender crowd in yet another case in which “conservative” Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberals. (Surprisingly, so did Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch.) That was nothing in comparison with the decision later in the week to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that former President Barack Obama created by executive order. The court, finding that the Trump administration hadn’t considered what would happen to DACA beneficiaries if the program were repealed, sent the action back to the administration for further consideration. Trump promised it would happen.
Bolton’s memoir of his White House days isn’t the usual “tell-all” book. One critic called it “revenge porn,” which isn’t far off the mark. (I received a review copy and am about halfway through it.) Of the major criticisms of Trump, the supposedly biggest is that he asked Chinese President Xi Jinping for help in the 2020 election by buying more U.S. agricultural products. But Special Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who was present for the conversation between the two leaders, said Bolton’s accusation is false.
Trump’s (and the Justice Department’s) risible efforts to prevent publication of Bolton’s book were doomed before they began. Not only were copies sent to major media, resulting in large excerpts being printed, but a television special focused on Bolton and the book meant whatever in the book was damaging to Trump was going to be highly publicized.
Seattle’s “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,” renamed the “Capitol Hill Occupied Protest” or some such, is now more than a week old. Within it, U.S. citizens are subjected to violent crime and extortion. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan are doing everything to appease the insurgents. And Trump is doing precisely nothing about it.
And Trump signed a well-meant executive order on police reform that no one noticed.
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
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
