U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he attends the premiere of the documentary film Melania at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, recently renamed to include U.S. President Donald Trump's name (REUTERS)
Dispatch senior editor Michale Warren says Trump isn’t hearing much bad news inside that thick White House bubble of his, and that’s too bad for him.
“Trump likely isn’t hearing much about [his] disappointing poll numbers at his periodic Cabinet meetings, during which his top advisers sit around the table, taking turns praising the president for his greatness while the cameras roll,” said Warren. “There is the introduction of more pro-Trump media outlets to prominent placements in the White House press corps, most of whom are less interested than the rest of the news media in pressing Trump and his spokespeople with difficult questions. And there is Trump and his aides’ steady media diet of friendly television news and social media that reinforces the false idea that Trump is actually popular.”
Warren said Trump’s White House team “prefers to keep him in these safe spaces, even as his approval rating sits nearly 15 points below water and Americans are increasingly abandoning him on his two signature issues, immigration and the economy.”
“Sycophantic aides who gatekeep bad information and a chief of staff who says she once told the president she’s not ‘the chief of you’ help create a feedback loop that tells Trump and his MAGA base that we’re all fine here, now, thank you,” Warren added.
Presidents always operate within a bubble, said Warren, but for Trump, the bubble is “thicker and harder to penetrate without the assistance of outside and undeniable forces.”
“It was the shock of the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal immigration officers, for example, that prompted Trump to reverse course on his administration’s aggressive immigrant dragnet in Minnesota, sending his border czar to institute a more ‘targeted’ enforcement strategy. When financial markets reeled at the announcement of Trump’s raft of new and steep tariffs last year, the president eventually, repeatedly, and reluctantly relented.”
Likewise, it was only after Democratic wins in most off-year elections and judicial races that Trump aides finally suggested the Trump take his charisma on the road to win back the hearts of America. As late as Friday, Trump was headed to Texas to sell his economic policies to voters and ask them to reward him and Republicans midterm victories this fall.
“One can imagine how the first year of Trump’s second term might have gone differently without the president having such a closed-off perspective. A Trump administration that merely extended his first-term tax cuts, implemented its strong border-enforcement measures, and stayed far away from the aggressive deportation strategy and economically unsound trade policy would almost certainly be more politically popular,” argued Warren. “In other words, do less.”
But that’s not like in the Trump bubble, said Warren, and the president is ailing because of it.
“… Trump’s bubble remains intact, and inside it the most frequent answer to the president’s political struggles is always to do more. More tariffs. More taunting of his political enemies. More Trump,” said Warren.