Trump’s Worst Week

President Trump hasn’t had a lot of good weeks in his first seven months which explains why his public standing is well below historic norms (40% or less). But the last week of July may be his worst.

• Health care votes have lost 7 to 9 Republican senators for a range of measures and finally failed when three members voted against a scaled-down version. Republicans can only lose two to push something to a House-Senate conference. Major defeat. 
• Trump’s Twitter tirade against Attorney General Sessions was mostly condemned as mean-spirited, belittling and unjustified. Most importantly, Republicans and conservatives shut him down. He looked weak.

  

  Recently resigned Chief of Staff Reince Priebus (L)
   and White House Communications Director Anthony
  Scaramucci (R) | Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

• His addition of Anthony Scaramucci as Communications Director has started a public war between Scaramucci, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus (now former) and Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. Scaramucci may not be media ready, even if Trump likes the “all attitude” approach. Priebus is out, which may allow a “reset,” but it reinforces the sense of White House chaos.
• In an effort to save a House funding bill, Trump tweeted a ban on transgender individuals in the military. The goal was to stop paying for medical procedures, not open up another fight over a total ban. It may be popular with his base, but it reinforces an image of thoughtlessness.
• But the pièce de résistance of the week was Trump’s partisan campaign speech to 45,000 teen and pre-teen boy scouts and their chaperones. The speech was nearly universally panned as inappropriate (a word often attached to Trump) and required the Boy Scout’s executive director to offer scouts and their families an apology for the “political rhetoric that was inserted into our jamboree.” An audience made for inspiration got the cynical jokes and jabs.

Although the President’s tone is appreciated by his dependable, but narrow base, Americans disapprove of Trump’s un-presidential conduct and claim it’s damaging the presidency. Seventy percent of the public, including 38 percent of Republicans, describe his conduct as “un-presidential” rather than “fitting and proper” (24%) as reported in the recent ABC News/Washington Post poll (July 2017). Important to the Boy Scout imbroglio is the data point that 68 percent of the public does not see him as a positive role model for young people.

Trump and supporters will argue that his jobs efforts in Wisconsin and anti-gang initiative were successes last week. But, who would know about them with the flood of crises and controversies, most of which were personally started and sustained by Donald Trump.

See ABC News/Washington Post poll: Public to Trump: #StopTweeting