White House Watch: Trump’s Weekend Twitter Jag

The president was criticized afterward for getting McLaughlin’s poll wrong, though it seems Trump was referring to the veteran GOP pollster’s Sunday appearance on Fox News reacting to a recent poll showing Republicans leading by one-point. My colleague David Byler explained last week how the Politico/Morning Consult poll illustrates a Republican trend over the last several weeks, not necessarily a dramatic shift in the GOP’s fortunes.

McLaughlin himself still has Republicans trailing Democrats on the generic ballot by 3 points, 45 percent to 42 percent, with both parties exactly where they were a month ago. Trump’s party isn’t doing any worse than they were last month, but it hasn’t seen a “big gain,” either. It’s certainly the most Republican-friendly poll among the public generic congressional ballot ones out there; RealClearPolitics’ average of polls gives Democrats a nearly 7-point lead.

But I found McLaughlin’s survey of likely voters interesting for other reasons. Since Trump took office in January 2017, McLaughlin has tracked a generic congressional ballot that is relatively stable and fairly close. Republicans had either a narrow edge or were dead-even with Democrats, at least until November 2017. That’s when Democrats took the lead, and it was the biggest for either party in the last year: 6 points, 46 percent to 40 percent. The GOP has closed the gap somewhat since then.

Trump’s own job approval and favorability ratings, however, have been underwater for longer than the GOP congressional ballot. Since May 2017, Trump has not had a positive job approval rating in McLaughlin’s poll, and his disapproval rating has never been below 50 percent. The same goes for his favorability and unfavorability ratings. And in McLaughlin’s (again, relatively Republican-friendly) survey, these ratings for Trump haven’t really improved and, some months, have gotten much worse.

This suggests the generic Republican congressional candidate hasn’t so far become synonymous with Trump. Voters may still distinguish between the president and their Republican member, even if (as McLaughlin finds) the Republican majority has abysmal approval ratings (37 percent to 58 percent disapproving). Perhaps Trump and Trump alone won’t be enough to put Democrats in the majority in the House.

But that doesn’t mean Republicans are out of trouble yet for the upcoming midterms. The underwater numbers on the congressional ballot could be lagging indicators of the bad spot the GOP is in nationally. The combination of bad approval for both Trump and the GOP majority could be too much for individual Republican members to overcome. McLaughlin, in his Fox News appearance, attributes the positive shift for congressional Republicans as much to Trump as he does for the passage of tax cuts, but the evidence from his own polling suggests there’s still separation in the voters’ minds between Trump and the party he leads.

Nuclear Football Watch—At Axios, Jonathan Swan has an alarming scoop from last fall’s presidential trip to Asia:

The special counsel investigation into Russian election meddling turned over a new slate of indictments Friday, accusing 13 Russian nationals of conspiring to destabilize the United States by inflaming political tensions through fake online groups and fabricated protests. From my colleague Andrew Egger:

In response to the indictments, President Trump and his allies have focused on the fact that the Russians began their destabilization campaign in 2014, arguing that this is conclusive proof that the Russians hadn’t been explicitly trying to get Trump elected.

One More Thing—On Twitter, Trump also seemed to imply that an unhealthy FBI focus on the Russia investigation was responsible for their mishandling of information about the school shooter in Parkland, Florida, last week.

Op-Ed of the Day—From Politico’s Blake Hounshell: “Confessions of a Russiagate Skeptic”

From the White House Pool—“Motorcade drove past Ultra Gentlemen’s Club near Palm Beach International Airport, which was advertising an event: ‘Stormy Daniels Making America Horny Again.’ The sign said the event is taking place April 13-14.”

Song of the Day—“Hey Bulldog” by the Beatles