by Michael Goodwin NYP
As far as President Trump is concerned, T.S. Eliot got it all wrong.
April is not the cruelest month, November is.
As he barrels toward the end of his first year back in the White House, the president is beset by slumping poll numbers and a pileup of problems, some of which are self-inflicted.
Even a gaggle of normally obedient Republicans in Congress are growing restless, and his call for gerrymandering House district lines in red states to pad the GOP advantage in the midterms is in danger of producing the opposite outcome.
The sheer volume of mounting trouble reflects Trump’s supreme self-confidence, grand vision and his “let’s do it now” management style.
On any given day, the combination results in too many balls in the air competing for his attention.
The big picture suggests he needs a reset, and maybe a rest.
In any event, it’s time to tighten the focus and follow a more methodical approach so the most important things get sufficient presidential attention.
It’s hard not to conclude that Trump’s scattered focus is the root cause of what ought to be triggering White House alarms: The president is underwater with voters on every major poll taken this month.
According to Real Clear Politics, his average approval is a mere 43%, while his average disapproval is 54.8%, a spread of minus 11.8 points.
Most troubling, the numbers are far worse on his handling of the economy, which was the issue at the heart of his resounding 2024 victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in all the swing states.
Yet now Trump’s average approval on the economy is a mere 39.5%, against an average disapproval of 57.8%, creating a huge spread of minus 18.3.
His recent talk of handing out tariff rebate checks of $2,000 smacks of desperation and echoes the deservedly maligned “Obama Phone.”
Three situations that erupted into public view in recent days illustrate the scope of Trump’s morass.
Although he touted a proposal his aides crafted to settle the Ukraine-Russia war as a sign that “something good may just be happening,” leaders in Europe and elsewhere blasted it as a shocking capitulation to Russian demands.
That was soon followed by another bombshell that revealed the helter-skelter nature of the process, namely that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was caught off guard by the proposed terms.
Rubio later pressed for pro-Ukraine’s changes even as he dutifully defended the initial effort as a “living, breathing document.”
Deadly opposition
Reports Tuesday that changes were made that are acceptable to Ukraine were encouraging, but then came news that Russia had fired a barrage of missiles and drones on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, killing at least seven people and wounding a score of others.
Russian officials marked the attack by saying they oppose the changes to the proposed deal made at the request of Ukraine, which would seem to send the plan back to square one.
At such moments, it’s worth remembering that Trump, while seeking his second term, said repeatedly that if elected again he would solve the war within 24 hours.
That’s not to deny that he has had great success as a peacemaker in other conflicts, including between Israel and Hamas, but this one has eluded his efforts because Russian leader Vladimir Putin has betrayed their supposedly good relationship at every turn.
Yet Trump returned to an old argument Sunday by posting on Truth Social that Ukraine’s leaders were guilty of “zero gratitude.”
The line recalled the Oval Office showdown last February, when Trump ejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from the White House, though their relationship was repaired, or at least it seemed to be.
But by demanding gratitude when Russia is attacking civilian targets in the Ukrainian capital in the midst of negotiations, Trump appears unduly spiteful.
Trump haters were especially gleeful over two other black eyes he suffered.
A federal judge’s decision to toss the indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James unleashed loud cheering in the media peanut gallery.
As The New York Times put it, the ruling by Judge Cameron McGowan Currie in Virginia marked “the most significant setback yet to the president’s efforts to force the criminal justice system to punish his perceived foes. The dismissals also served as a rebuke to Attorney General Pam Bondi, who had rushed to carry out Mr. Trump’s orders.”
Yes, but the ruling had nothing to do with the merits of the charges, which the government promises to file again.
The ruling dealt primarily with the role of Lindsey Halligan, a former Trump lawyer whom he wanted Bondi to appoint as an interim US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
The problem is that Trump had fired the first interim prosecutor, Erik Siebert, who reportedly said the cases against Comey and James lacked sufficient evidence.
Still, Halligan, working largely alone and over the objections of other prosecutors in the office, won grand jury indictments against both, but the judge declared her appointment improper.
The problem is that Siebert was also an interim appointment, and the law forbids Bondi from appointing two different people in the same 120-day window, the judge ruled.
This is not Bondi’s first screwup, and she should have known about the timing limitation.
Still, the judge dismissed the indictments “without prejudice,” meaning the government can refile the accusations against both Comey and James.
The idea that Trump is hell-bent on punishing his political enemies is a handy one for the left, but it never concedes that Comey, James and others first investigated Trump largely because he was a Republican.
They targeted him for purely political reasons, yet that’s only a problem when he goes after those who abused their offices and arguably committed other crimes.
James stands accused of mortgage fraud and Comey allegedly lied to Congress in 2020.
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