How is President Trump doing in his first 100 days?

"Besides Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, none of the 27 other political appointees who staff the department’s leadership have been confirmed, according to the Partnership for Public Service’s nomination tracker. Mr. Trump has announced only six other Treasury appointees and has yet to name anyone as assistant secretary of tax policy — a critical post for spearheading a rewrite of the tax code. Many important deputy under secretary roles also remain unfilled."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/us/politics/tax-reform-treasury-department.html?_r=0

 

It's interesting to compare and contrast the two polls that were asked at this forum. The first question was asked the 30 days leading up to the election and the second poll was asked up to 100 days after the election. Here are the poll questions and results:

Pre-election poll:
Who is going to win the presidential election?
- 59% Hillary Clinton is going to win
- 40% Donald Trump is going to win
Source

Post-election poll:
How is President Donald Trump doing in his first 100 days?
- 54% good or very good
- 45% bad or very bad
Source

 

No conclusion was drawn by the author of the polls. It's just a "comparison and contrast" of the two different polls.

 

Yes. I voted in Me Again's first poll that Hillary was most likely to win the election. I based that on the polls saying almost universally that she was going to win and on the almost universally hostile coverage that Trump was receiving in the MSM.

But I nevertheless voted for Trump, based on my very strong support for his policies on things like trade and illegal immigration. I didn't really expect him to win, but I wanted him to do as well as possible.

It was only the evening of election night that I started thinking that there were a lot more people like me out there than I thought and Trump had a real likelihood of winning.

Then in Me Again's second poll, I voted 'Good' instead of 'Very Good', since I thought that Trump was saying the right things, and I liked most of his appointments, but I wanted to see his policies in action and wanted to see results.

 

The MSM was and remains completely oblivious to the will of most Americans, as is evidenced by their rigged pre and post election polls. The will of the American people is going in one direction, while the MSM has diverged into a charted direction towards an uncharted black hole that leads to ________.

 

Hmmm. Just outside that 100 day mark but Trump is about to lose another NSA appointee

Sources: Sebastian Gorka to leave White House - CNNPolitics.com

and yeah, you can try to deflect from the story by trashing CNN some more but the fact is that this guy is losing his job regardless of who reports it first.

 

This is another in the endless succession of stories based on "sources" who, in true journalistic fashion, are never named. Readers (at least the ones more adept at critical thinking) have no way of arriving at any intelligent judgement about the information's provenence or credibility. So as usual, the story devolves into "trust us", where everything is based on the news outlet's perceived credibility.

Given that the story comes from CNNPolitics, which isn't exactly well-liked in the Trump administration, one wonders who the "senior administration officials" are that are supposedly leaking this information to the opposition media.

Breitbart says that their 'sources' (which I'd bet are a lot closer to Donald Trump than CNN's) say that it isn't true and Dr. Gorka isn't going anywhere.

Somebody at the Washington Times (arguably better connected than CNN) says that she hears that Dr. Gorka may be moving from an assistant adviser role in the White House to an anti-terrorism related post elsewhere in the government, so if he is moving it might conceivably be a lateral move.

We will have to wait and see.

 

My guess would be the Washington Post.

 

If I were a "source" with fake or half-fake "information" about the Trump administration, I'd take it to the news outlet the least likely to seriously vet it.

 

Assuming that we're still talking about Gorka, I would let the investigators determine what is fake and what is real before making assumptions based on a story from any source. I believe that investigation is in process.

 

That was a general observation, as well as a commentary that the media these days get so excited when "sources" reveal "information" that suits their agenda, they throw objectivity and impartiality right out the window. Not that they had much to begin with.

 

I agree that impartiality is in short supply, on both sides of the fence.

 

The rumors concern Dr. Gorka supposedly being forced out of his position as Deputy Assistant to the President and out of his position on the Strategic Initiatives Group (that I believe is tasked with planning broad administration goals and purposes, not responding to specific crises).

So if there's any truth to it, it would have to be information about discussions taking place at the highest levels of the White House where those kind of decisions are made. Dr. Gorka was chosen for his role by the President and serves at the President's pleasure. (Presidents get to choose who they trust and listen to.) I don't see Trump administration figures in a position to know about those kind of behind-closed-doors discussions about high level personnel matters (assuming they ever happened) choosing to leak them to an opposition news outlet like CNNPolitics.

If there was a leak and CNN wasn't making this up out of whole cloth, then I'd guess (that's all it is) that it might be coming from Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who sits on the same Strategic Initiatives Group. Kushner is said (in the 'alt.right' media) to be something of a New York liberal. He reportedly has a heated and competitive relationship with Steve Bannon (anything but a New York liberal) for Trump's ear. And Dr. Gorka is associated with the Bannon faction, I think, at least Gorka used to work at Breitbart.