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Raw Story: ‘Two-faced guy’: Trump official creates ‘real worry’ as credibility plunges to record lows

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President Donald Trump’s most popular cabinet official has been plummeting in public approval as he takes aim at a broadly accepted policy.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will conduct a new review of abortion pills, the latest move taking aim at health care matters that has included vaccine mandates and Tylenol use by pregnant women that Americans had come to take for granted as uncontroversial.

And CNN data analyst Harry Enten said his actions have his approval ratings plunging.

“Down it goes,” Enten said. “What are we talking about here? Well, let’s take a look. Net approval rating in March, according to Quinnipiac it was minus-11. You go to June, down it goes to minus-15, and now, data that’s just out this week, minus-21 points. We’ve seen a drop of 10 points since March. The more RFK Jr. Is implementing or trying to implement his policies, the further down his net approval rating goes, and at this particular point, 21 points underwater is not a place you want to be.”

Kennedy had been the most popular Trump official at the start of this month, with a net approval rating of minus-7 points, but the more the public sees from him the less they agree with his policies, Enten said.

“What is going on here?” Enten added. “Well, I think, you know, RFK is sort of a two-faced guy when it comes to the American public. What do they like about RFK Jr.? Well, Americans who support restricting artificial food dyes. Look at this: It’s 60 percent. That, of course, is something that RFK Jr. has been trying to implement, right? They like RFK Jr. when it comes to food dyes and stuff in food.

“But look at this: Trust RFK Jr. on vaccine information, he’s significantly lower. He’s down at 37 percent, and obviously, RFK Jr. has been trying to change some of the advice that’s going on from the federal government when it comes to vaccines. Americans do not trust RFK Jr., they do not like him on vaccines. They like him when it comes to food dyes, they don’t like him on vaccines, and this has been the number that has been far more in the news recently. If I were advising RFK in terms of if he wanted to be more popular, I’d be focusing on this.”

“I think that this is the real worry, right, because they don’t trust RFK Jr., right, on vaccine information, and take a look here,” Enten added. “Gives trustworthy info on public health? The CDC, it was 72 percent last year. Look at this: It’s 64 percent now. How about the FDA? It was 73 percent last year, it’s 63 percent now. Most of this decline is coming from Democrats, who all of a sudden are wondering, can I actually trust the information that’s coming out of the federal government, whether or not it is coming out of RFK Jr.’s mouth? Because obviously, as you said, all those agencies that he’s overlooking, those are very important.

“If the public doesn’t trust them, we’ve got major problems, and at this particular point, when you look at these numbers, the flip side is now more than a third of Americans are not confident in the information that they are getting at either the CDC or the FDA, which I think a lot of public health officials are quite worried about.”

‘Two-faced guy’: Trump official creates ‘real worry’ as credibility plunges to record lows

https://www.rawstory.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr-approval

Raw Story: ‘Our president is so weak’: Strategist says Trump just highlighted a major vulnerability

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Cabinet members showered President Donald Trump with praise at their hours-long televised meeting, but a political consultant warned those displays of devotion could wind up backfiring.

The 79-year-old president on Tuesday hosted a record-breaking three-hour, 16-minute cabinet meeting where Senate-confirmed officials fell over themselves laughing at his wisecracks and insults, and they lavished him with adulation that astonished “CNN News Central” host Erica Hill and other onlookers.

“These cabinet meetings that the president holds that are really, I suppose, a moment for, once again, his cabinet to publicly praise him,” Hill said. “It’s a very ‘dear leader’ feeling moment. Yesterday, nearly four hours – does that concern you at all?”

Republican strategist Shermichael Singleton doesn’t think those displays would break through with most Americans, who he said won’t likely see the meetings on television.

“I don’t pay attention to to those meetings, and I don’t think that most average Americans pay attention,” he said. “Most people are working during the times that we’re in these things.”

“So do they not matter?” Hill interrupted.

“I don’t think they do,” Singleton replied. “I’m just being honest. If I were to conduct a focus group and do some qualitative analysis, and I were to ask the American people, ‘How much do you care about the president showcasing 20 minutes of these meetings that we actually air on TV?’ I think most people probably would say, ‘I don’t care, I don’t think about it, I’m too busy doing other things.’ So I don’t think that matters a whole lot at all.”

Democratic strategist Karen Finney disagreed, saying the public would be appalled once they actually saw what takes place in those meetings.

“I think what actually would matter to people is the fact that he needs so much validation,” Finney said. “You know, he is doing this retribution tour, revenge on people like John Bolton. He is firing people who won’t give him information if they give him the truth, but he doesn’t like the truth, you’re going to get fired. He seems to think that economic policy is really all about controlling the Fed, so how can I get rid of the people I don’t like and just get the people I do like, and then has to sit in a meeting where everybody is clearly instructed that they have to boost his ego up.”

“I don’t agree with Shermichael,” she added. “I don’t think most people care about much of what’s happening in that meeting, but I think they care that our president is so weak that he needs to be bolstered like that.”

Click here to watch.

‘Our president is so weak’: Strategist says Trump just highlighted a major vulnerability

https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-cabinet-meeting-2673924734

Raw Story: Trump’s bizarre Cabinet meeting revealed something ‘a little scary’: ex-White House aide

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A former White House national security advisor was taken aback by the Trump administration’s most recent cabinet meeting.

Jake Sullivan, who served as former President Joe Biden’s national security advisor, discussed the meeting on a recent episode of The Bulwark’s podcast on YouTube. He described the meeting as one taken from a “Kim Jong-Un documentary,” referring to the dictatorial leader of North Korea.

“Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Sullivan said. “And there is a kind of ludicrous, humorous quality to it, but it’s also a little bit scary because it reflects something deeper and dangerous about the president’s autocratic tendencies and the fact that these people around him are just so slavish that I don’t think they would stand up to him on anything at any point.”

“And without those kinds of guard rails, I think it’s uh it’s bleak what we may be facing here in the coming days and months,” he added.

Sullivan said the tactics Trump is using to fulfill his autocratic tendencies reminded him of other strongman leaders across the globe.

“This looks a lot like Erdogan in Turkey. It looks a lot like Orban in Hungary,” Sullivan said. “But with one big twist, which is in both of those cases, it took a long time for them to play out their strategy. We’ve been at this now for seven months. And you just look at the breakneck speed with which Trump is moving to try to break down the various guardrails of our democracy.”

“It’s extremely concerning,” he added.

Watch the entire episode … by clicking here.

Trump’s bizarre Cabinet meeting revealed something ‘a little scary’: ex-White House aide

https://www.rawstory.com/jake-sullivan