But their disapproval had more than tripled by October, after Trump blasted players for kneeling to protest police violence during the national anthem. The same thing happened with football: Less than 20 percent of Republicans said they had unfavorable views of the NFL in the summer of 2017. Last year, their views forked: Republican approval of the agency fell by about 10 points, while Democratic opinion improved by a similar margin. In 2014, about 60 percent of both Republicans and Democrats said the FBI was doing an "excellent" or "good" job. Years ago (even months ago) it would have been absurd to imagine “law and order” Republicans souring on the FBI or that the party of Reagan and Bush would turn on the NFL, America’s most orgiastically patriotic sport.īut that’s precisely what’s happened. Why Biden Shouldn’t Run in 2024 Mark Leibovich But the country is only just beginning to understand the scope of Trump’s lexical influence. Trump’s rhetoric doesn’t produce the legislative artifacts that journalists typically use to analyze presidential power-it hasn’t translated to many actual laws passed. On issues as diverse as the alleged dangers of immigration and the nature of truth, Trump’s words have the power to cleave public opinion, turning nonpolitical issues into partisan maelstroms and turning partisan attitudes on their head. “Politics is persuasion as well as coercion,” the political scientist Jacob Levy wrote last week, rightly arguing that Trump has “changed what being a Republican means.” He has done so not through legislative coercion-indeed, he barely seems to understand the basics of American government-but through persuasive insistence. The upshot seems to be: Ignore the words, heed the substance.īut Trump’s words are his substance.
Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, have repeatedly ignored and dismissed Trump’s most shocking comments criticized the media for paying attention to his tweets feigned forgetfulness of his vulgarities and even made jokes about all that ignoring, dismissing, and forgetting. Liberals and moderates occasionally insist that the media and the public should shift their attention from the president’s vulgar statements to the real policy work happening at federal agencies.
In Donald Trump’s first year in office, there has been a surprisingly widespread effort to argue that they do not.