President Donald Trump's polling has fallen into the 30s amid a series of government crises and unpopular decisions, hitting a new low for his second term — but there is still a key factor he has that many other presidents with similar popularity crashes did not, former GOP speechwriter Tim Miller told MSNBC's Chris Hayes on Wednesday.
This comes despite constant GOP taunts of Trump possibly running for an illegal third term, something that Miller argued is far from a sign of strength.
"Part of the kind of Jedi mind trick about a third term is a kind of projection, so that that never enters anyone's head," said Hayes. "Like, oh, there might be a day after this kind of political thing. There might be a battle for who succeeds him. It does seem to me they've been successful so far, but I do wonder how long they can stave that off."
"I do think that this whole third-term talk is a sign of his utter weakness, right?" said Miller. "This idea that, like, even that it would be plausible that they would think that their best option would be an 83-year-old king in four years, it just shows a lack of confidence about who might replace him and whether they can keep the coalition together."
"I think the thing that protects him from lame-duckism, and the thing that protects him from these Republicans abandoning him ... is that unlike other presidents at 39 percent, like, his poll numbers are not dropping equally across the board," Miller continued. "You know, when George W. Bush's numbers dropped, you know, after Katrina and the Iraq War started to go bad. Republicans, independents, Democrats ... were kind of going down on him equally. That is not the case now, right? Like, Trump is still at 90 percent with Republicans. And it's just his Democratic approval rating is two, and the independent rating is dropping to 40, to 30, right?"
"And so as long as the Republican number is 90, these Republicans aren't going to move, right?" he added. "And that number is not going to change. And the lame-duckism won't come into play unless there's real material harm done to them. And we're seeing some of that in farm country and elsewhere. But I just think that that's — I think that's the one thing that's protecting him from just total weakness at this point."
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