Don't count Trump out yet

He may be down but he's not out

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

Donald Trump is playing the presidency on All Madden difficulty. Roughly five minutes after taking the oath of office, his own FBI was trying to remove him from office via a made-up constitutional procedure. The Rosenstein-Comey affair metamorphosed into the special counsel investigation, which in turn begat Trump's impeachment. Now he is facing a public health crisis, Great Depression-level unemployment, and the worst rioting since 1968, to which he is responding with tweets about septuagenarian antifa sleeper agents.

We live in a strange country, one worthy of the president we elected. According to Gallup, Trump's approval rating during the pandemic has consistently been in keeping with former President Barack Obama's at this point in his first term until recently; even now, after dropping during the recent protests, it is not as low as it was in December of 2017. This is one of the many reasons why recent attempts to write off Trump's chances at re-election sound to me like wish fulfillment.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.