MANY VOTERS RESPECT ANGRY TRUMP MORE THAN THEY RESPECT THEMSELVES

This morning I've been looking at the crosstabs of a recent CNN poll. The topline number in this poll wasn't great for President Trump -- his job approval rating was 45%, with 54% disapproving -- but some of the other numbers in the poll should have pointed to an even worse result.

Respondents were asked,

Thinking about the following characteristics and qualities, please indicate/say whether you think each one applies or does not apply to Donald Trump.

Only 40% of respondents agreed that Trump "cares about people like you"; 60% said he doesn't. Only 34% said that Trump "will unite the country and not divide it"; 65% said he wouldn't. Only 38% said he "respects the rule of law"; 62% said he doesn't.

However, 50% said he "can bring the kind of change the country needs" (49% said he can't), and 49% said he "can mange the government effectively" (51% said he can't).

So at least 10% of the country thinks that Trump "can bring the kind of change the country needs" despite believing that he doesn't care about people like themselves. At least 12% of the country thinks that Trump "can bring the kind of change the country needs" but will also divide America. At least 12% of the country thinks that Trump "can bring the kind of change the country needs" despite also believing that he doesn't respect the rule of law.

The 10% of the country that thinks Trump can do what's right for America without caring for people like themselves isn't the MAGA base -- we know that those people believe Trump cares deeply about them. I think this sliver of the electorate is the one that gave Trump the win in November. They think the country will get better as long as we have a president who's doing something aggressively -- even if they're caught in the crossfire. (The husband of a Peruvian immigrant who says he doesn't regret his Trump vote even though Trump is trying to deport his wife clearly falls into this category.)

Pollsters ask whether voters think a politician cares about people like them, or ask about issues voters care about. In the crosstabs of a recent NBC poll, we see Trump doing poorly on the issue voters say they care most about: Trump, in this poll, has a 44% approval rating on the economy, with 54% disapproval. He's at 42%/55% on inflation and the cost of living. He's also at 45%/53% on foreign policy, and 42%/55% of Russia and Ukraine. Only on border security and immigration is he in positive territory (55%/43%). Yet his overall job approval rating in this poll is not bad: 47% approve, 51% disapprove.

Voters like the cruelty of Trump's approach to immigration -- and I think they like his aggression in the abstract. We might have guessed that the vast majority of voters would be alienated by some of his insane acts of aggression, but while some voters clearly are, others seem to be living vicariously through his apparently limitless ability to push people around and get away with it. They also seem to believe that our bully president is being a bully for America, and that America needs a bully, even if he's not acting as if he cares about people like themselves.

That's the only way I can understand a couple of batshit crazy stories that are leading the news today. First, Greenland:

Relations between Greenland and the United States sank further on Sunday as the Greenlandic prime minister erupted over what he called a “highly aggressive” delegation of senior officials the Trump administration said it would send to the island this week.

Usha Vance, the second lady, and Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, are among the officials headed to the island, which is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, though President Trump has vowed to make it part of the United States “one way or the other.”

When a Reuters/Ipsos poll asked respondents whether "the U.S. should take control of Greenland so the U.S. military can better guard the country," 69% disapproved and only 27% approved. Yet this insane crusade doesn't seem to be harming Trump's overall popularity -- in most polls, his job approval nearly matches his job disapproval.

The other crazy story is this one:

President Donald Trump on Sunday night disparaged a portrait of himself hanging in the Colorado Capitol as “purposefully distorted” and called on the state’s Gov. Jared Polis to take it down.

“Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,” Trump wrote to his social media platform Truth Social.

He acknowledged that the artist, Sarah Boardman, had also painted a portrait of former President Barack Obama, which he said looks “wonderful,” calling his “truly the worst.”

Is the Trump painitng really worse than the Obama painting? I don't think either one is very good, but they both seem respectful.

A significant percentage of the non-MAGA portion of the country watches Trump pick ridiculous fights like this and doesn't think, Our president is dangerously crazy. Instead, these people think, He's a bull in a china shop, but the country is a mess, and maybe that's what we need to straighten it out.

I think more non-MAGA Americans might tip toward He's dangerously crazy if Democrats talked about the crazy stuff more often. Democrats should focus on important aspects of the Trump presidency that aren't popular (firing veterans, gutting needed programs, empowering Elon Musk) -- but they should also focus on the things Trump does that are just plain preposterous. Maybe if he got more pushback on these things, he would seem like what he actually is -- a head case with anger issues whose most precious possessions are grievances -- rather than like an assertive leader who gets things done because he makes noise.