Despite 90 percent negative coverage by the establishment media, President Trump’s approval ratings have climbed, causing some anti-Trumpers to realize the public is tiring of the constant Trump bashing.
Jimmy Kimmel may be lightening up on his virulent Trump bashing. Maybe. The late-night comedian has made anti-Trump “joke” tirades a staple feature of his opening monologue and has brought a non-stop stream of Trump Rage celebrity guests onto his program. However, in a May 11 interview with Deadline about his upcoming ABC Upfronts roast of advertisers, Kimmel suggested he might focus on other targets. When asked if he had been “saving up a barrelful of barbs for the President,” Kimmel responded: “Oh, wow. Yeah, you know, I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but I guess you’re right. Hopefully it’ll be the last upfront of the Trump era, too. So, I don’t know, I don’t know how much focus there will be on that. I think people have had an a**-full of Donald Trump, and I feel like the upfront is a time to look within and make fun of ourselves.”
So, would his comedy routine for the network advertising execs be “Trump-free,” Deadline asked? “Well, I can’t imagine that it will be entirely Trump free, but I’m not planning on that to be my focus,” Kimmel said. “Already I’m seeing a lot of other things to point out, to make fun of.”
Some conservative commentators interpreted Kimmel’s remarks to indicate the liberal-left comedian appears to be recognizing that the American people have had enough of the non-stop, over-the-top Trump bashing by the media and Hollywood. However, that is probably a misread of Kimmel’s remarks, since he said “people have had an a**-full of Donald Trump,” not that people have had “an a**full” of media Trump-bashing.
Garbage in — garbage out
In a May 11 interview with AdAge, Kimmel confirmed what most critics had suspected: his anti-Trump obsession is the result of an unhealthy Fake News diet.
“What’s your media diet?” AdAge’s Jeanine Poggi asked. Kimmel’s reply: “My home page is CNN.com. No one is unbiased anymore, but they do a good job with the news. I go to ESPN.com for sports stuff. I read a lot of The New Yorker, New York Times, Washington Post. I bounce around a lot.” That explains it — bouncing around from CNN to ESPN to the Times and WaPo. Jimmy, apparently, is not aware that CNN’s continuing free-fall in ratings is precisely because the American public easily recognizes its coverage as being so flagrantly biased. Little wonder that poor Jimmy Kimmel is trapped in perpetual Trump Derangement Syndrome. So, there is little likelihood that Kimmel will let off on his Trump attacks any time soon.
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Like Kimmel, many Democrats and media commentators who reside in their deep blue bubbles can’t help themselves; they believe they must demonize President Trump 24/7/365. However, the more sober-minded in the “progressive” spheres of influence realize that after two years of incessant media vilification, the American public is tiring of blatantly biased and often vicious attacks. “It’s time for the Democrats to stop bashing President Trump,” says Willie Brown, in a May 12 column for the San Francisco Chronicle. As California’s State Assembly speaker for 15 years (1980-1995) and mayor of San Francisco for eight years (1996-2004), Willie Brown has been a major force in the Democratic Party for decades. Along with Governor Jerry Brown (no relation), he claims credit (or blame) for pushing the Left Coast further and further leftward.
“Like it or not, a significant number of Americans are actually happy these days,” notes Willie Brown. “They are making money. They feel safe, and they agree with with the president’s protectionist trade policies, his call for more American jobs, even his immigration stance.”
That’s not all. Brown continues: “The jobs growth reports, the North Korea summit and the steady economy are beating out the Stormy Daniels scandal and the Robert Mueller investigation in Middle America, hands down.” “So you are not going to win back the House by making it all about him,” he warns.
Long considered one of the most powerful Democrats in the nation, Brown advises his comrades to change their tactics and strategy: “Rather than stoking the base by attacking Trump, Democrats need to come up with a platform that addresses the average voters’ hopes and concerns. Not just the needs of underdogs or whatever cause happens to be the media flavor of the week.” “Democrats need to look like the adults, not like another pack of screaming kids on the playground,” Brown warned.
Impeachment talk is sure to backfire
In a May 13 op-ed for The Hill entitled “Dems must beware impeaching Trump if the blue wave prevails,” veteran Democrat Party consultant Douglas Schoen warns that “While Democrats ferociously want an impeachment, most Americans do not.”
Schoen, who was a pollster for President Bill Clinton and a consultant for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, writes that “if the Democrats do win back the House and pursue impeachment against the president, there is little on the record to suggest House Democrats have enough evidence to get a conviction in the Senate.”
“We could thus see a divided government much like we encountered in 1998,” says Schoen. “Such an outcome does not serve the American people’s interests and only serves to further embroil Washington in divisive gridlock. It also, ironically maybe, would bode well for Trump’s reelection bid in 2020.”
Schoen warns that a “Quinnipiac poll from April 2018 also found that just 38 percent of all Americans favor impeachment. If Democrats recklessly pursue impeachment without a mandate by all Americans, not just the left, they could face retribution at the ballot in 2020 and beyond. While an impeachment strategy may energize Democratic voters and serve Democratic interests in the short-term, it will not bring left-leaning Independents into their camp. These are the [Bernie] voters that helped bring Trump to victory in 2016 and a group Democrats should be courting. If Democrats manage to flip the House come November, they will still likely be forced to reckon with a Senate controlled by Republicans. To pursue impeachment in a divided government is a double-edged sword, as was demonstrated with Bill Clinton in 1998. Democrats should be wary of this path, lest it hurt their chances in 2020.”
Schoen may be overly optimistic in considering that the Democrats will not shoot themselves in the foot with impeachment before the upcoming midterm elections. As we noted above, some rabidly anti-Trump Democrats and their media cheerleaders just can’t help themselves; they are already jumping the gun on impeachment talk, with some of them playing to their far-left base by making impeachment of Trump a top campaign pitch.
Apparently, these Dems didn’t get the memo from NPR/PBS last month that said impeachment talk is not winning campaign strategy. “Pushing Impeachment Would Backfire On Democrats, NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll Finds,” an April 18 NPR headline read.
“Pledging to impeach President Trump would backfire on Democrats hoping to take back the House of Representatives this fall, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll,” NPR reported. “The survey finds that 47 percent of registered voters would definitely vote against a candidate who wanted to remove Trump from office, while 42 percent would definitely vote for a candidate who would make such a promise. Forty-seven percent of independent voters — whose opinions could be decisive — also say they would vote against candidates favoring impeachment.”
President Trump has not only managed to weather an unprecedented negative media campaign, but actually has gained ground in public opinion in spite of it. “The liberal media’s war against President Trump was as fierce as ever during the first four months of 2018, but the onslaught appears to be for naught: In the face of massive and hostile coverage from ABC, CBS and NBC, Trump’s overall job approval rating actually rose, from 37 percent in mid-December to roughly 43 percent at the end of April,” reported the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters website on May 8.
“The Media Research Center studied all broadcast evening news coverage of the president from January 1 through April 30, and found 90 percent of the evaluative comments about Trump were negative — precisely the same hostile tone we documented in 2017.”
Photo: AP Images
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