BloggeRhythms

Yesterday, Chris Stirewalt illustrated @FoxNews.com, that he’s one of very few journalists that’s begun to grasp the new POTUS’s significant capabilities at keeping his adversaries off-balance and confused. However, while Stirewalt is far more insightful than most others in his field, even he can’t fully comprehend the adeptly applied elements of confusion and misdirection of adversaries Trump's now employing at the highest level of all.

Stirewalt begins by opining that: “Political distractions are like a man’s cologne. A little splash will cover a multitude of sins, but too much becomes a worse problem all on its own. 

“President Trump may have over-applied this weekend.” 

From there, Stirewalt presents the idea that by suggesting that Obama illegally ordered wiretaps of Trump’s phones during the 2016 campaign, Trump may or may not have been “sincere in his charge of such a serious crime against his predecessor.” After that, Stirewalt quotes Weekly Standard Editor Steve Hayes as saying:  “proving or disproving Trump’s claims about Obama would be next to impossible…for anybody other than Trump, that is.” 

Stirewalt then adds the possibility that “Trump was angry, frustrated and feeling stuck after seeing frittered away what had started as a great week for his administration with his well-received speech to Congress.” Leading up to the premise that “what cost Trump his momentum was another sub-controversy surrounding claims of connection between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin.”  

In Stirewalt’s opinion: “Republicans, including those within the Trump administration, had done a pretty good job by Friday of capitalizing on Democratic overreach on the undisclosed meeting between then-Sen. Jeff Sessions and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. With Sessions having already recused himself from any investigations of the campaign of which he was a part, the tide seemed to be turning against Democrats. 

“But then the president got ahold of his phone and proved that he can still change the national discussion 140 characters at a time.” 

Thus, by this point, Stirewalt’s come full circle and beyond. After first defining Trump’s problematical issues he then describes how they were corrected only to be resurrected once more by Trump himself. 

Continuing his analysis, Stirewalt writes: “But that’s not to say that there won’t be some benefits to Trump’s gambit. By seeking to discredit the investigation itself, Trump neatly discredits its findings, at least as far as his core supporters are concerned. One of the tools of scandal management is “muddying the water,” which Trump has done here with the efficiency of a Mississippi River dredge. 

“Trump’s attempt to inculpate Obama in such a grotesque political scandal not only will be given a credulous hearing by about a third of the electorate, but will also insulate Trump if the investigation eventually bears fruit.” 

And then, Stirewalt arrives at the only element of these issues that matter at all as he concludes: “Nothing will ever satisfy enthusiastic partisans on the Democratic side, just as no evidence could convict Trump in the eyes of his strongest supporters. But at some point in the coming weeks or months, grownups will come to a conclusion about the actual allegations. 

“Until then, the rest of it is just a lot of noise. And those for and against Trump ought to spare themselves (and the rest of us) all of the frantic coverage and conversation about the facts of the case. Especially of a presidential weekend twitter outburst. 

“What matters right now is how long it takes for Trump to end the chaotic infighting in his White House and get back on message. Only then can we find out how much damage his claims did to a briefly-held optimism about his maturation in office.” 

And that's where Stirewalt drops the ball completely. Because while he and his media compatriots are focused on the intricacies and elements of specific issues involved, the voting public is not. Especially when it comes to the new president.   

According to Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday, 51% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-nine percent (49%) disapprove. 

At present, 45% of voters think the country is headed in the right direction which is the “sixth week in a row that this finding has been in the mid-40s after running in the mid- to upper 20s for much of 2016,” Obama’s last year in office.
 
In the next two categories voters show that they are in full agreement with two of Trump’s goals, but put no pressure on him to immediately provide solutions. “Voters agree with the president’s emphasis on new jobs in his speech last week to Congress, and most expect him to achieve at least some of the ambitious agenda he laid out, and "Most voters continue to expect significant government spending cuts over the next few years and agree that any new spending must be offset by budget cuts elsewhere.” 

As far as the media eruptions regarding health care are concerned: “Only 12% of voters want to keep leave Obamacare alone, but more voters than ever (56%) are calling for fixing the health care law rather than throwing it out completely. Just 30% think Congress and the president should repeal the entire law and start over again.” 

So, here again, While the MSM consistently attempts to make the Obamacare repeal a political issue, the majority of the voting public doesn't care about how it's referred to, they just want it fixed. 

And then: “Rumors have been circulating for weeks that Hillary Clinton is eyeing a New York City mayoral run, but most voters don’t want to see the failed 2016 Democratic presidential candidate run for mayor of New York City. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that just 23% think Clinton should seek the mayoralty, while 19% are not sure.” 

However, the 23% that want to see her run for the mayoralty are still more than the 17% of Democrats who want to see her run for president again in 2020. 

In all, “58% of Likely U.S. Voters don’t want to see the failed 2016 Democratic presidential candidate run for mayor of New York City.”

So, while Stirewalt and the MSM keep up their continual nitpicking analysis of Trump's performance to date, other than in new junkies minds, for the most part they're writing to themselves. 

That's it for today folks. 

Adios