There are two big stories today.
First, there is the President Trump press conference from yesterday:
Washington Post:
I will not be quoting from Trump's press conference. (If you want a highlight of some of the things he said, here is a CNN article.) It was over 75 minutes long, so a lot was said.
In spite of the mainstream media's shock over it, this press conference was pretty standard Trump. He is outrageous and defiant. Controversy doesn't cow him in any way.
Michael Goodwin had the best take on this press conference:
New York Post:
Amid feverish reports of chaos on his team and with Democrats fantasizing that Russia-gate is another Watergate, Trump took center stage to declare that reports of his demise are just more fake news.This is what Trump is. If you don't like it, you are in for a rough 4-8 years. On the other hand, if you are looking for someone to shake up Washington, Trump looks pretty darned good right now.
Far from dead, he was positively exuberant. His performance at a marathon press conference was a must-see-tv spectacle as he mixed serious policy talk with stand-up comedy and took repeated pleasure in whacking his favorite pinata, the “dishonest media.”
“Russia is a ruse,” he insisted, before finally saying under questioning he was not aware of anyone on his campaign having contact with Russian officials.
Trump’s detractors immediately panned the show as madness, but they missed the method behind it and proved they still don’t understand his appeal. Facing his first crisis in the Oval Office, he was unbowed in demonstrating his bare-knuckled intention to fight back.
He did it his way. Certainly no other president, and few politicians at any level in any time, would dare put on a show like that.
In front of cameras, and using the assembled press corps as props, he conducted a televised revival meeting to remind his supporters that he is still the man they elected. Ticking off a lengthy list of executive orders and other actions he has taken, he displayed serious fealty to his campaign promises.
Sure, sentences didn’t always end on the same topic they started with, and his claim to have won the election by the largest electoral college margin since Ronald Reagan wasn’t close to true.
Fair points, but so what? Fact-checkers didn’t elect him, nor did voters who were happy with the status quo.
Trump, first, last and always, matches the mood of the discontented. Like them, he is a bull looking for a china shop. That’s his ace in the hole and he played it almost to perfection.
Speaking of Trump, it is not just the American people who have wildly different views of him:
The Hill:
The Rasmussen Reports and the Pew Research Center released wildly different approval ratings for President Trump on Thursday.Considering how wrong the polls were on the general election, is it any surprise they would get Trump's approval rating wrong?
Rasmussen's daily Presidential Tracking Poll found a 55 percent approval rating for Trump among voters. But Pew Research Center only found Trump with 39 percent support — a 16 point-difference between the two polls.
Rasmussen, which has traditionally found results that are more positive for Republicans than other polls, seems to be an outlier among major polls, with Gallup also giving Trump a lower 41 percent approval rating in its most recent weekly average.
Finally, on to our second big news story today:
NBC News:
Tens of thousands of people across the United States are expected to skip work and attend rallies and marches Friday as part of a "general strike" to "get our democracy back."You noticed that strike yesterday, right? I missed it too.
Strike4Democracy, one of the groups organizing the nationwide event, which is called the "#F17 General Strike," said more than 100 public protests are expected. Event pages on Facebook indicate the potential for high participation: Nearly 20,000 people have responded to the page for a New York City march alone.
It will be the second straight day of national protests, following Thursday's "Day Without Immigrants" campaign, which was aimed at making a point about the economic impact immigrants have on the U.S. labor force.
Foreign-born residents of the United States were asked to stay home from work or school — and to refrain from shopping — in rallies and marches in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Denver and many other cities.
So what is today's strike about? Just an excuse to bash Trump. The following cartoon summarizes it best:
(hat tip to Sparta Report for the cartoon)
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