The percentage of Americans who think President Donald Trump keeps his promises has dropped precipitously over the two months, according to a new Gallup poll out Monday.
The survey conducted April 5-9 found that roughly 45 percent of respondents think Trump follows through on his promises, down from 62 percent in early February.
At the beginning of his presidency, Gallup notes, the public seemingly took his executive orders and Cabinet appointments “as evidence Trump was keeping his campaign pledges to fundamentally alter the course of the federal government.”
But since then, “Trump appeared to walk away from repealing the Affordable Care Act after Republicans failed to agree on the healthcare replacement bill that Trump stood behind. Political friends and foes alike have complained that Trump is not carrying out the promises he made on the campaign trail. Supporters have expressed unhappiness that more has not been done on taxes and immigration, in addition to healthcare. Opponents say he has not protected middle- and working-class Americans.”
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Indeed, the GOP healthcare plan—which Trump nominally supported—was essentially a handout to the wealthy at the expense of everyone else, and his “skinny budget” proposes to decimate everything from Meals on Wheels to medical research and education programs while funneling more money toward the Pentagon. On Monday, Public Citizen revealed that the president who vowed to “drain the swamp” has in fact spent much of his time in office meeting with corporate executives, while his anti-lobbyist rhetoric has also been proved false.
Just last week, Trump seemingly flipped or pivoted on several economic and national security policies—all in the space of just a few hours—and despite the administration’s anti-environment policymaking, even climate deniers are reportedly “unhappy with their return on investment from Trump.”
But it’s in places like Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and Bensalem, Pennsylvania that the bamboozlement is felt the deepest.
“Just like any other damn president,” 44-year-old Theresa Remington of Bensalem, a home-care worker and the mother of two active-duty Marines, told the New York Times.
“She had voted for Donald J. Trump because she expected him to improve conditions for veterans and overhaul the healthcare system,” the Times wrote in its profile of the swing district. “Now?”
“Political bluster,” Remington scoffed of Trump, wondering aloud how things might have been different if Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) had won his presidential bid.
Meanwhile, in Muscle Shoals, voters who overwhelmingly supported Trump are facing “draconian cuts to federal programs that have served as a lifeline to the Shoals’ fledgling economy,” Sabrina Siddiqui reported Sunday for the Guardian.
“If enacted, Trump’s budget would all but guarantee the closure of the area’s regional airport, scale back funding for job training, and leave the local tourism office without critical grant money,” Siddiqui wrote. “Most crucially, Trump’s fiscal plan would eliminate two federal agencies, the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) and Delta Regional Authority (DRA), that invest millions of dollars annually toward boosting not simply Alabama’s rural communities but also many of the other rural states populated with the president’s most ardent supporters.”
Giles McDaniel, executive director of the Shoals Entrepreneurial Center, summarized the as such: “You had people who said, ‘Well, golly, how could Trump not include the ARC in his budget? Those are all the states that voted for him.'”
Ultimately, the bait-and-switch may bode poorly not just for Trump himself, but for the Republican party as a whole. A Pew Research Center poll released Monday finds that just 40 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the GOP, down from 47 percent in January, prior to Trump’s inauguration.
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