President Trump's approval rating is not in great shape — even in the one poll he's known to turn to for good news.
Trump's approval rating is at 43 percent in Rasmussen's latest poll, with his disapproval rating at 55 percent. This is the worst Rasmussen showing the president has had in a full year; his approval rating was last at 43 percent in January 2018. Trump tends to hover much closer to 50 percent or more on Rasmussen, a fact he is typically quick to point out on Twitter even when other polls put him below 40 percent.
Among the likely voters surveyed, 32 percent strongly approve of Trump compared to 38 percent who strongly approved of him back in October. This number has been much lower before, though, staying below 30 percent through much of fall 2017. The percentage of likely voters who strongly disapprove of his performance has risen to 46 percent, though, the highest number it has reached on Rasmussen since July 2018.
This poll is hardly an outlier, as FiveThirtyEight, which compiles findings from a wide variety of pollsters, shows that Trump's approval rating is trending downward and is 40.7 percent on average, with his disapproval rating at 54.3 percent. This is the worst shape he's been in on FiveThirtyEight's tracker in four months, and it comes amid a partial government shutdown that most Americans blame on the president.
Rasmussen conducted its survey by speaking to 1,500 likely voters over the phone from Jan. 11 through Jan 13. The margin of error is 2.5 percentage points. Read more at Rasmussen. Brendan Morrow
The Women's March revealed Monday that three founding board members who have been accused of anti-Semitism, financial mismanagement, and other detrimental behavior are being replaced by 16 new board members from across the U.S. The original members — Tamika Mallory, Bob Bland, and Linda Sarsour — actually stepped down July 15, The Washington Post reports, though they were still listed as co-chairs through Monday. Bland and Mallory will be formally replaced as co-presidents when the new board meets this month and elects new leaders.
The Women's March told CNN in a statement that it "has not cut ties with the three departing board members; their terms have ended." The incoming board members — who include three Jewish women, two religious leaders, a member of the Lakota nation, and a transgender woman — "represent a truly diverse swath of women who have fought and will continue to fight tirelessly for women's equal rights," the statement added.
Most of the charges of anti-Semitism stem from the board members' associations with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. The original Women's March, the day after President Trump's inauguration in 2017, was one of the largest single-day protests in U.S. history, and the organization has continued to organize demonstrations, including one against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh planned for early October. But the anti-Semitism allegations, a contentious and unsuccessful battle to trademark "Women's March," and other issues have led to rival groups splintering off and the withdrawal of supporting organizations. Peter Weber
"Saudi Arabia is once again a radioactive political football in the U.S., and President Donald Trump can't resist grabbing it," Politico reports. Trump's implication Sunday that Saudi Arabia would dictate the U.S. military response to Saturday's aerial attack on a Saudi oil facility "prompted fury in Washington, where the Saudis have faced an increasingly hostile climate in recent years," in fact "almost as politically charged as in the years immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when it was revealed that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis."
Trump administration officials have said Iran is behind the attack on the major oil facility, though Trump and Saudi Arabia are publicly less definitive on the culprit. In a telephone briefing Monday, Brian Hook, Trump's special representative to Iran, told congressional staffers that Saudi Arabia views the attack as "their 9/11," CNN and The Washington Post report, citing two people familiar with the call.
The comparison to the Saudi-linked terrorist attacks, less than a week after the 18th anniversary of 9/11, "rankled several staffers," the Post reports. People also felt the comment was inappropriate, CNN reports, "because there have been no reported deaths as a result of the Saudi oil field strikes yet nearly 3,000 Americans were killed in New York, Washington, and outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in the 9/11 attacks." An official used the same 9/11 comparison on Trump during a briefing on the Saudi oil explosions, a source tells The Daily Beast, and Trump appeared "unmoved."
"From an American perspective, it seems like a trivialization of the tragedy of 9/11, and perhaps offensively so," Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, explains to The Daily Beast, "but from a Saudi point of view it is a way of explaining their shock to Americans." Peter Weber