Trump Should Be On '24-Hour Suicide Watch' Because of Low Approval Ratings, Says Former Ted Cruz Aide
President Donald Trump's latest approval rating and other poll numbers are so bad that he should be on a "24-hour suicide watch." That was the verdict of Rick Tyler, a former spokesman for Ted Cruz's presidential campaign and now a contributor for MSNBC.
"If I were a political consultant looking at a candidate who had these kind of numbers, I'd have him on 24-hour suicide watch," he said on MSNBC's Morning Joe Tuesday. "These numbers are not good. They don't look recoverable."
A CNN poll released Tuesday showed Trump's approval rating had dropped to 38 percent, the lowest number for any president after 200 days in office. Adding to the bad news, the ratio of Americans who strongly disapprove of Trump's performance compared with those who strongly approve is almost 2-to-1, 47 percent to 24 percent.
The negativity does not end there. Only 24 percent of Americans said they trusted the information that comes out of the White House. Perhaps most worrying is evidence that, despite Trump's tweet to the contrary on Monday, his base is eroding. In the poll conducted from August 3 to August 6, 59 percent of Republicans indicated they approved strongly of his performance, down 14 points since February. A similar decline was indicated in his support among whites without a college degree, a group that was key to his victory in the 2016 election.
The Trump base is far bigger & stronger than ever before (despite some phony Fake News polling). Look at rallies in Penn, Iowa, Ohio.......
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 7, 2017
Another poll, released Monday by the American Research Group, indicated that if the New Hampshire primary were held today, Ohio Governor John Kasich would triumph over Trump, 52 percent to 40 percent.
Amid the painful poll numbers, The New York Times reported Saturday that multiple Republicans, including Vice President Mike Pence, were already preparing presidential runs for 2020. Pence has vehemently denied the story, and Trump went on a renewed Twitter attack against the Times.
Tyler, though, went on to say that Trump's numbers mean that such uncertainty and posturing around 2020 is inevitable.
"The administration and the vice president can complain about The New York Times story, but we wouldn't have this story if the president's polls numbers were in the mid-50s, high 50s, or low 60s," he added. "Instead, they're in the 30s, and so everyone is speculating. Everybody's positioning for any eventualities that might occur with this very unpredictable administration."
At least publicly, however, Trump has shown no indication of looking inwardly as to the source of the poor numbers, repeatedly launching tirades against the "fake" polling and the "fake news" outlets that produce them.
Tyler himself was dismissed from the Cruz team last year after promoting a false news story that called into question the faith of Republican primary rival Marco Rubio.
