Donald Trump is 'glum' because 80,000 dead Americans is cutting into his own popularity

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

In important weekend news, we learn that Trump is sad because it turns out killing 80,000 Americans (and counting) through rank incompetence is making him, personally, less popular.

Oh, and that Republicans are worried that killing off their own electorate might cost them the Senate majority, come November. Not because of the deaths directly, mind you, just because it looks kind of bad. Don't worry, though, they have a plan too: The plan is to argue that they're doing a great job despite all the dying, and also it's someone else's fault.

The Washington Post brings us both stories, but the news that Trump is Sad, as "deaths mount" and as the Trump team abandons efforts to fight the virus to instead focus on "reopening" the country, is surely the more important news. The administration has not been able to orchestrate the sort of widespread testing that other nations are relying on to determine when they should reopen their own economies, so the answer is to not try. There is no contact tracing plan. There is no evidence that anyone has been able to drum into Trump's empty head even the most basic facts about the virus—no, it will not "go away on its own"—or that Mike Pence or any of the other top Trump officials give a particular damn about trying.

And so Trump is sad. The Post reports that some of Trump's advisers "described the president as glum and shell-shocked by his declining popularity" and that "in private conversations, he has struggled to process how his fortunes suddenly changed from believing he was on a glide path to reelection to realizing that he is losing" in the polls to Biden. Truly, Dear Leader is having a moment here.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/5/10/1944117/-Donald-Trump-is-glum-because-80-000-dead-Americans-is-cutting-into-his-own-popularity?detail=emaildkre

[RhodeIslandOne]

1. "Popularity"

LOL.

[GoCubsGo]

2. Boo fucking hoo.

[northoftheborder]

3. This times a million

[sop]

4. "There is no evidence that anyone has been able to drum into Trump's empty head

even the most basic facts about the virus." Or anything else, for that matter. This is nothing new. It's Trump's most dangerous psychopathy. Only now we're dealing with a life and death crisis, and the POS is killing us by the tens of thousands.

[LizBeth]

5. He has never been out of 40's. That is not "popular".

[ProfessorGAC]

21. Yes, Properly It Should Read...

...increasingly more unpopular.

[Mike 03]

6. Christ. This is an excerpt from the Washington Post article linked in this story:

During a task force meeting Wednesday, a heated discussion broke out between Deborah Birx, the physician who oversees the administration’s coronavirus response, and Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Birx and others were frustrated with the CDC’s antiquated system for tracking virus data, which they worried was inflating some statistics — such as mortality rate and case count — by as much as 25 percent, according to four people present for the discussion or later briefed on it. Two senior administration officials said the discussion was not heated.

“There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust,” Birx said, according to two of the people.

[COLGATE4]

7. We already knew that Birx was a complete sell out.

We just didn't know how complete it was.

[bdamomma]

8. Birx

sold her soul to the devil when she just sat there and said nothing about ingesting bleach.

[NCjack]

12. She did let him climb the 13 stairs to the platform, stand on the

trap door, put the 13-wrapped noose around his own neck and adjust the knot, pull the lever that activated the trap door. And, she let his body dangle at the end of the rope.

I give her credit for not interrupting that event. Surely, she caught hell for it from Trump and friends.

[COLGATE4]

22. That was her swan song. But remember when before that

performance she went on Faux to explain how Trump supposedly was a master of absorbing all the details of the briefings the medical experts were (trying to) give him.

[MoonRiver]

10. That's just so fucking tragic.

[Jarqui]

11. I do not buy the article entirely:

"described the president as glum and shell-shocked by his declining popularity" and that "in private conversations, he has struggled to process how his fortunes suddenly changed from believing he was on a glide path to reelection to realizing that he is losing"

a) Trump knew Biden represented problems for his reelection. His polls against Biden were the worst. That's why Trump tried to knee cap Biden with the Ukraine

b) Trump's approval has been underwater since Trump was elected.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_approval-6179.html
Trump reads the polls ...

c) if Trump really and truly thought he was doing so great, he wouldn't have to lie nearly so much
President Trump made 18,000 false or misleading claims in 1,170 days
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/14/president-trump-made-18000-false-or-misleading-claims-1170-days/

The one thing that has propped Trump up was keeping the Obama economy afloat.
That bubble has burst and with it, seriously jeopardized his reelection chances along with the death toll.
He's in a place where it might appear that no amount of lying and cheating, etc will allow him another term. That's what might be depressing him. They were never going to be able to win it fair and square. Now, even cheating makes it very uphill. But you can be sure he's desperate and will do anything to not relinquish power because he's facing prison and he knows it.

[sop]

13. I'm really not buying that "glide path to reelection" crap. Anyone who believes Trump was on a

"glide path to reelection" before the COVID-19 pandemic hit has been living in a cave for the last three plus years. This POS has alienated just about every voting bloc that matters, other than his racist, nazi, white nationalist base and his 1% corporate backers. Trump was on a glide path to defeat, the pandemic just turned it into a crash dive.

[Jarqui]

14. They were on a "glide path" to lie, cheat and to try to steal it like they did on 2016

Now they're on a desperate path to find some way to lie, cheat and steal it.
It's depressing Trump that lying, cheating and stealing looks insufficient to allow him to cling to power.

[abakan]

15. I don't believe for a second

trumpdadump has the capacity to feel sadness. This is just propaganda so we don't think he cares about any of the deaths he has caused.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

16. "80,000 dead" is not cutting into his popularity, ...

... it's the fact that he doesn't care about 80,000 dead. That could affect his popularity.

Then again, I think his base is also unaffected by the number of dead. After all, they're mostly in NY, NJ.

[bdamomma]

17. until

the covid hits them in their own backyard. They are true denial.

[abakan]

20. Isn't that the number he "won" by?

Too bad he was too stupid to understand he was killing his supporters and doing so with glee.

[Blue Owl]

18. Fuck that loathsome loaf of stale shit

I firmly believe we would not be in this mess if Hillary was rightfully in office, like 3 million more Americans wanted

[tanyev]

19. You know all those people died just to make him look bad!