BTRTN: Operation Warped Mind – Sounds and Silence

Tom with the BTRTN December 2020 Month in Review.  This was a month that simply has no precedent in American history.  Yes, we said that last month, too.  And that wasn’t the first time, either.  We’ve lost track.

Whatever pretense remained that Donald Trump was performing the role of President of the United States in the first 47 months of his presidency was stripped bare in this, his 48th.  In a presidency in which every month is a candidate for "worst ever,” the only drama now is whether or not Trump can possibly pack even more dysfunction and damage than ever into his final 20 days in January.

Trump invested the entire month in personal grievance.  Those very loud sounds you heard emanating from the White House were those of a man bent on destroying democracy, cratering the most fundamental of our democratic institutions:  a free and fair election process and the orderly transition of power.  His cultish appeal is so strong that he managed to convince a sizable portion of the Republican Party that something went dreadfully wrong with the election – when, in fact, it was proven time and again that absolutely nothing went wrong.  Indeed, this was an all-too-rare (of late) shining moment for our democracy.  Collectively, our country executed our elections superbly in the midst of a pandemic, accommodating a record turnout and a variety of voting formats, over extended vote-making and vote-counting periods, with virtually no irregularities to speak of.  Through dozens and dozens of investigations, lawsuits, audits and recounts, the only consistent finding was that there was no evidence of fraud whatsoever.  These verdicts have affirmed the fairness and equity of our electoral system – undermining not only Trump's fraud charges but also the very basis of past GOP efforts to disenfranchise voter segments that tend to be Democratic.

Following the voting and initial flurry of challenges in October and November, the electoral process continued to unfold in a reasonably orderly fashion in December.  Having once claimed that his followers would get tired of winning, Trump himself never tired of whining – and losing.  He suffered loss after loss in the courts (more than 50 cases in all), his legal team performing in an embarrassing manner, forced to make ludicrous arguments that were excoriated by judge after judge, including Trump appointees, for lack of evidence.  After recounts, investigations and the courts all validated the swing state election outcomes, state after state accredited the electoral vote in line with them, a process completed by December 6.  On December 14, the electors gathered and abided by those choices, to a person.  The Supreme Court spoke twice during this ordeal, each time essentially refusing to hear the case for lack of evidence or standing.  Trump’s ultimate weapon, his three personally selected conservative picks, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett, each voted against him both times.  Headlines reaffirming Joe Biden's victory appeared again and again.

After the Court and the electors spoke, Mitch McConnell finally recognized Biden as the President-Elect on December 15, robbing Trump of his most powerful ally.  His other primary henchman, Attorney General William Barr, also broke with Trump, first publicly affirming that there was no material election fraud to be found and then refusing to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate the election (or Hunter Biden, for that matter).  Finally Barr announced he was leaving the administration early – presumably to avoid being party to any further shenanigans.

Trump promptly turned on McConnell and any Republican that recognized Biden as well.  These were the rats finally deserting the sinking ship, leaving Trump only with even lower life forms clinging to him in the White House.  This inner circle included such fringe scum as Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell, an attorney so loathsome, so steeped in the most absurd of conspiracy theories (that somehow the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez had a role in the election “fraud”) that Rudy Giuliani found her objectionable.  Flynn and Powell threw around terms like “martial law” and “special counsel” with vigor, tempting Trump to do even more endgame damage to the credibility of our elections in his waning days.

But for all of Trump’s manic cacophony in his efforts to upend the election outcomes, perhaps even more striking in the month was his silence – a silence borne of his complete abdication of his role as Chief Executive.  Some of the silence was predictable – Trump quickly dismissing a substantial Russian hacking effort (that some said was tantamount to war) as perhaps instead the work of the Chinese.  This conclusion was completely at odds with the conclusion of Russian duplicity announced publicly by Mike Pompeo and the intelligence community.

But Trump also was silent in ways that confounded.  Why not issue some statement in the wake of the suicide bombing in Nashville, as is typical and expected from a president?  And why not claim at least some credit for the rapid development of several COVID-19 viruses, especially given that Trump’s only interest in managing COVID was vaccine development?  Most politicians would savor these moments to rise above the fray and act presidential (in the first instance) and take a victory lap (in the second).  It was crystal clear that Trump, by choice, was simply refusing to put on the presidential suit and do his duty.  This is not hard stuff, but apparently too much for a president consumed with his defeat -- and determined to golf his way through the transition ordeal.

Of course, Trump continue to ignore the virus itself in December, a month in which a record shattering 5.9 million new cases and 80,000 deaths were recorded.  The latter number, of course, far exceeds the 58,000 deaths in the 20-year history of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.  But Trump issued not a single statement of sympathy, not a single call to a victim’s family, not a single exhortation to wear masks, not a single call for perseverance as the vaccines made their way into the arms of highest priority health workers – indeed, not a word about those health workers and their heroic efforts.

Trump emerged only twice from his self-imposed silence to perform executive duties, and both were miserable exercises of presidential prerogatives.  The first was the initial wave of presidential pardons.  Presidents are granted a completely unfettered ability to pardon anyone they wish, for both crimes committed and also potential convictions to come (at the federal level).  There have been plenty of controversial pardons in the past, but Trump’s initial wave of 41 pardons in late December were beyond the pale, sparing from justice a collection of cronies, murderers and miscreants without historic parallel.  The pardoned included several convicted in the Mueller investigation (such as Paul Manafort and Roger Stone), the father of Jared Kushner, and, perhaps most appallingly, four Blackwater contractors convicted of murdering civilians, including children, in Iraq.  Never has justice been so swiftly overturned and unjustly denied.

The other area that awoke Trump from his slumber was the COVID relief bill, itself a lengthy exercise in Congressional futility.  After months of stalemate, a subset of bi-partisan centrist Senators broke through with a formulation that ultimately yielded long awaited relief in the $900 billion range.  Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin represented the White House in the negotiations, and the arduous process was brought to conclusion in mid-December with the twinning of a $900 billion COVID bill with a $1.4 trillion year end spending bill to fund the government through September 30, 2021.  The bill finally passed both houses of Congress by late December.

Trump was completely uninvolved in the process, presumably delegating it to Mnuchin.  But when it was brought to his desk for signature, he promptly disavowed it, calling the $600 direct checks to Americans a “disgrace,” proposing instead a $2,000 check provision.  This delay caused various benefits to expire and threatened to shut down the government, given the twinning with the spending bill.  It also put all Republicans, including Georgia Senators Purdue and Loeffler, on the verge of a run-off election that will decide the fate of the Senate, in the excruciating position of either undoing all their work or looking like unfeeling cheapskates.  Trump eventually backed down, signing the bill, gaining nothing in return for his pointless intervention – losing yet again. 

Trump also suffered his first veto override of his presidency on the National Defense Authorization Act, a routine piece of legislation that has been passed for 59 consecutive years, because of its failure to address the liability protection status enjoyed by social media purveyors.  Why Trump has chosen to exit his presidency with not one but two public legislative humiliations is beyond comprehension.  Perhaps he has indeed become addicted to losing.

Throughout all of this madness, Joe Biden has been quietly living up to and exceeding every expectation for his presidency.  He has stepped into the leadership void with a series of public speeches that articulate themes the president himself should, of course, have been advancing.  He has mixed doses of the cold hard realities of what lies ahead in the short term with ringing calls for optimism in our ability to defeat the virus with common sense mitigation measure (masks) at first, and then the vaccines.  He has selected a Cabinet that, to date, has lived up to his promise to be diverse in record-setting fashion, but also reflects his governing style, which is decidedly center-left.  And while he avoided a senseless give-and-take with Trump on the fraud charges, he has scolded Trump and his team when needed (for example, to call out instances of transition obstacles),  And, he has also left room for recalcitrant congressional Republicans -- that he must work with going forward -- to recognize him on their own timelines.  In short, he has not as yet missed a step.

The vaccines were approved with great fanfare by the FDA in mid-December, with the bold promise of 20 million (first) doses in the arms of Americans by December 31.  But this short-term deadline was badly missed; at this juncture, the official tally is under three million.  This might be mildly understated, but the real number is still almost certainly a fraction of the goal.  Trump’s statement in response to this miss was to throw the states under the bus – claiming that the federal government was only responsible for getting the vaccine to the states, and it was up to them to get them to the public.  But there is no doubt the federal distribution performance has fallen short, and the states themselves are terribly underfunded for the distribution challenge, which the COVID relief bill will, in part, address.  But once again, the lack of a true national plan, from factory to arms, has been exposed.  Biden will have to address this as Job One.

Where does Trump go from here in his last 20 days?  The next step in his quest to stay in office is to upend the January 6 Congressional certification of the Electoral College results.  He has found about 140 GOP members of the House to challenge this certification, and one Senator, the ambitious Josh Hawley of Missouri.  This tactic too will fail, but the damage this spectacle has and will cause is incalculable. And apart from all this, we will witness the very public agony of Mike Pence, who must decide whether to accept the results of the election, side with Trump and deny the will of the voters and the basic tenets of our democracy, or turn the gavel over to Chuck Grassley by ducking the proceedings.  This is known as a lose-lose-lose; each option could destroy his presidential prospects.  

Mitch McConnell and Ben Sasse are, first and foremost, Trump enablers.  Anyone who voted against impeachment falls in this category, and McConnell, certainly, has gone much further than that, indulging in the fraud fantasy for far too long.  But both appear to have finally seen the light.  McConnell has opposed the effort to upend the January 6 certification process from the start, warning fellow Republican Senators not to support it.  Now that Hawley has breached that line, McConnell has plainly stated that in his 36-year career he has "never faced a more consequential vote," a choice he characterized as between voting against the most popular GOP figure of our time or voting against democracy – making clear he stands opposed to Trump.

Sasse’s words were even more direct and bear repeating:

"Having been in private conversation with two dozen of my colleagues over the past few weeks, it seems useful to explain in public why I will not be participating in a project to overturn the election -- and why I have been urging my colleagues also to reject this dangerous ploy…The president and his allies are playing with fire. They have been asking -- first the courts, then state legislatures, now the Congress -- to overturn the results of a presidential election. They have unsuccessfully called on judges and are now calling on federal officeholders to invalidate millions and millions of votes. If you make big claims, you had better have the evidence. But the president doesn't and neither do the institutional arsonist members of Congress who will object to the Electoral College vote.

When we talk in private, I haven't heard a single Congressional Republican allege that the election results were fraudulent -- not one.  Instead, I hear them talk about their worries about how they will 'look' to President Trump's most ardent supporters…Let's be clear what is happening here: we have a bunch of ambitious politicians who think there's a quick way to tap into the president's populist base without doing any real, long-term damage. But they're wrong -- and this issue is bigger than anyone's personal ambitions." 

Beyond January 6, expect more despicable pardons.  It is possible that Trump may pardon himself.  It is even possible he may also resign and demand that President Pence pardon him.  Trump also has the power of Executive Orders at his disposal, and he remains Commander-in-Chief.  It is impossible to predict how he might use all of these powers as the clock on his pathetic president dwindles.

At this juncture, Trump has shown virtually no restraint in his wrecking ball quest for self-preservation.  Fasten your seat belts.  Month 49 could indeed be the rockiest yet.

MONTHLY MADNESS

On Christmas Day, Donald Trump had plenty of reasons to be agitated.  COVID cases and deaths were growing at a record shattering pace.  Vaccines for the virus were not being distributed at a pace that his administration had promised.  And his machinations to overturn the election were being stymied at every turn. 

But he was not focused, at that moment, on any of those challenges, nor those of the economy, the pending COVID stimulus bill, the apparent veto override to the Defense bill, the upcoming Georgia elections, the Russian hacking or any of a thousand other things that may be on a president’s mind.

This is what was on his mind:  he retweeted a Breitbart News post that said: “The elitist snobs in the fashion press have kept the most elegant First Lady in American history off the covers of their magazines for 4 consecutive years.”

 

TRUMP APPROVAL RATING

Trump’s approval rating remained in the same typical range for the month of December, at 42%.  This marks the 36th consecutive month that Trump’s approval rating fell in the 40-45% range.  Trump paid the ultimate price for failing to expand his base of support in losing the reelection.  But he has paid no further price for his behavior since, thus far preserving his ability to seek the nomination again in 2024.

TRUMP APPROVAL RATING
	2017		2018		2019		2020
	1H	2H	1H	2H	1H	2H	J	F	M	A	M	J	J	A	S	O	N	D
App	44	39	42	43	42	43	43	44	45	45	44	41	41	43	43	43	42	42
Dis	50	56	54	53	54	54	54	54	53	53	53	57	57	56	55	56	55	55
Net	-6	-17	-12	-10	-12	-11	-10	-11	-8	-8	-9	-15	-15	-13	-12	-13	-12	-13

TRUMP’S HANDLING OF THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS

Approval of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus continued in the 40% range, a tick mark below his approval rating.

TRUMP HANDLING OF CORONAVIRUS
	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Approve	48	46	43	41	39	40	42	40	42	40
Disapprove	47	51	54	56	58	57	56	57	55	56
Net	1	-5	-11	-15	-19	-17	-14	-16	-14	-17

TRUMPOMETER

The Trumpometer remained in historically disastrous territory in December at -108.  The -108 Trumpometer reading means that, on average, our five economic measures are an astounding 108% lower than they were at the time of Trump’s Inauguration, per the chart below (and with more explanation of methodology below).  

This level is virtually unchanged versus the -109 from the previous month.  There was no new GDP information.  Consumer confidence dropped while the price of gas rose.  These negative impacts were offset by a slight drop in the unemployment rate to 6.7%, and a modest rise (+3%) in the Dow Jones.

The “Trumpometer” was designed to provide an objective answer to the legendary economically-driven question at the heart of the 1980 Reagan campaign:  “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”  The Trumpometer now stands at -108, which of course means things are far worse than that, even worse than the -53 recorded at the end of George W. Bush’s time in office, in the midst of the Great Recession. 

Presidents >>>	Clinton	Bush	Obama	Trump
Measures	End Clinton  1/20/2001	End Bush 1/20/2009	End Obama 1/20/2017 (Base = 0)	Trump 11/30/2020	Trump 12/31/2020	% Chg. Vs. 1/20/2017 Inaug.  (+ = Better)
Trumpometer >>>	25	-53	0	-110	-109	-108%
Unemployment Rate	4.2	7.8	4.7	6.9	6.7	-43%
Consumer Confidence	129	38	114	96	89	-22%
Price of Gas	1.27	1.84	2.44	2.19	2.33	-4%
Dow Jones	10,588	8,281	19,732	29,639	30,606	55%
GDP	4.5	-6.2	2.1	-9.0	-9.0	-529%

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Notes on methodology:

BTRTN calculates our monthly approval ratings using an average of the four pollsters who conduct daily or weekly approval rating polls: Gallup Rasmussen, Reuters/Ipsos and You Gov/Economist. This provides consistent and accurate trending information and does not muddy the waters by including infrequent pollsters.  The outcome tends to mirror the RCP average but, we believe, our method gives more precise trending.

For the generic ballot (which is not polled in this post-election time period), we take an average of the only two pollsters who conduct weekly generic ballot polls, Reuters/Ipsos and You Gov/Economist, again for trending consistency.

The Trumpometer aggregates a set of economic indicators and compares the resulting index to that same set of aggregated indicators at the time of the Trump Inaugural on January 20, 2017, on an average percentage change basis... The basic idea is to demonstrate whether the country is better off economically now versus when Trump took office.  The indicators are the unemployment rate, the Dow-Jones Industrial Average, the Consumer Confidence Index, the price of gasoline and the GDP.