Americans Have No Trust in Congress
Trump calls Pelosi’s impeachment bluff, authorizing declassification of intel documents.
The latest Gallup poll finds that 77% of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing. The RealClearPolitics average of all the latest polling isn’t much better, as it finds Congress’s disapproval rating at 69.2% overall, with a positive approval rating of just 20.2%. Why is this the case?
As the White House observes:
On January 3, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took over as Speaker of the House for the second time in her career. In the four and a half months since, Americans have gotten another close look at what career politicians do best: anything but solve real problems.
For more than two years, Congressional Democrats excused inaction by attacking President Donald J. Trump every day for a crime he did not commit. The Mueller Report — a 400-page document that cost American taxpayers at least $35 million — recommended no charges against the President. That should have ended the matter.
Instead, Democrats have a new obstruction strategy: weaponize the subpoena powers of Congress to fish for political ammunition to use against the Trump Administration. …
Today, 4 percent of Americans say they have a great deal of trust in Congress. …
Between 1958 and 2015, public trust in Washington plunged from 73 percent to 18 percent.
So on that note, Thursday evening, President Donald Trump authorized Attorney General William Barr to declassify any documents related to the federal government’s surveillance of his campaign in 2016. Clearly, this was a timed response to Pelosi’s vacuous allegation that Trump was engaged in a cover-up — for a crime Democrats have yet to determine. But it also serves to highlight the reason the vast majority of Americans currently hold such an unfavorable view of Congress. Instead of working to solve actual problems facing the country, such as the ongoing border crisis or the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, Pelosi and company have decided to play obstructionist politics.
Trump has therefore called Pelosi’s bluff. He knows she doesn’t have the cards to play. She knows she can’t actually instigate impeachment without seriously endangering her party’s chances of holding onto the House in 2020. Ergo, Pelosi’s ridiculous political game of insisting Trump is guilty of something, while at the same time suggesting that impeachment is a no-go. Is it any wonder Americans have such a dim view of Congress?
