Trump Worried That the Karens of America Are Starting to Find All This Death Distasteful!

Ah, the elusive Suburban (White) Woman™, with their sensible mid-size SUVs and sensible athleisure. They’re the crown jewel of the 2020 election cycle, the coveted group that Democrats and Republicans want more than anyone else. It’s no surprise as to why. They, or at least the affluent, educated women that make up the model suburban white women in the eyes of political posters and the press, are a reliable, influential voting block, whose political loyalty might lean Democrat but sways according to public opinion. And at the moment, that public opinion just isn’t gusting in Trump’s direction, and the Trump campaign is starting to get nervous.

The Daily Beast reports that the Trump campaign is worried that covid-19 is doing serious damage to his relationship with that voting block. His appeal in the suburbs wasn’t great before a fatal virus spreading across the country, and it sure isn’t improving with Trump at the helm of this crisis.

From the Daily Beast:

Data compiled by the progressive firm Navigator polling showed a major erosion in support among Republican voters—and women in particular—for loosening stay-at-home directives. On April 16, 40 percent of GOP women said they worried that those restrictions would “go too long” and 41 percent worried that they’d “end too soon.” One week later—after Trump had embraced the idea of “liberat[ing]” states—those numbers stood at 32 percent and 53 percent.

Shortly after Trump tweeted his call for people to “LIBERATE” states where Democratic governors imposed aggressive public safety restrictions, several officials in the White House counseled him that coming down so hard on the side of protests could backfire politically, two administration sources say.

But despite a slew of new polling data that shows that suburban women are becoming more and more displeased with Trump’s performance, Trump isn’t interested in listening:

In a recent White House meeting, Trump was briefed on his latest poll numbers, including those on suburban women voters in a Fox News survey from late March, which showed 60 percent of suburban women disliked how Trump has acted as president. According to a source with knowledge of the discussion, Trump responded by quipping that Fox pollsters were always out to “get” him, and largely dismissed the data.

Watch out for MAGA Mom champions Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle working overtime in these next several months to convince their base that Trump’s palatable enough.

Stephen Miller, the Trump administration’s number one cheerleader for white nationalism, has every intention of turning the temporary halt on immigration into the United States into a more permanent one.

The Washington Post reports that Miller said as much in a phone call with Trump surrogates Thursday. While the move by the Trump administration to curtail several means of immigrating in the United States for the next 60 days was controversial from the jump, it didn’t go far enough for the most extreme anti-immigration advocates within Trump’s base. They were disappointed that Trump’s policy didn’t impact temporary foreign workers. But Miller reassured skeptics that this is all just one morsel of a larger plan to disenfranchise immigrants, including the most vulnerable.

From The Washington Post:

Miller told the group that subsequent measures were under consideration that would restrict guest worker programs, but the “the most important thing is to turn off the faucet of new immigrant labor,” he said, according to a recording obtained by The Washington Post. Miller indicated that the strategy was part of a long-term vision and was not seen only as a stopgap.

“As a numerical proposition, when you suspend the entry of a new immigrant from abroad, you’re also reducing immigration further because the chains of follow-on migration that are disrupted,” said Miller, one of the executive order’s main authors. “So the benefit to American workers compounds with time.”

In fact, Miller was concerned that his heartless orchestration against immigrants wasn’t heartless enough for some on the right.

On the call, Miller sounded stung by the criticism from the right and urged surrogates and supporters to speak up for the president.

“All around the country, Americans of every political stripe will rally behind an initiative to make sure that they, their children, their parents, their husbands, wives, sons, uncles, nephews, cousins can be the first to get a job when it opens up, to get her old job back when they rehire or to keep their job if they already have one,” he said.

“Those individuals have a right and an expectation to get their jobs back and not to be replaced by foreign workers. That’s the action the president took, it is historic. It is vital, it is necessary, it is patriotic and it deserves the full-throated support of everybody on this call.”

Halting immigration to the United States is Miller’s wet dream, and it looks like it’s coming to fruition one way or another.

Trump has reportedly been pretty fucking emo lately. So much so that the Mike Lindell, the MyPillow dude, stepped in to help him out. The New York Times reports that in March, Lindell said that the president was so dour that Lindell “pulled out his phone to show him a text message from a Democratic-voting friend of his who thought Mr. Trump was doing a good job.” Bleak! [New York Times]
Trump claims he was just being sarcastic when he told reporters Thursday that people can inject themselves with disinfectant as a covid-19 treatment.

Sometimes you just gotta laugh!

The Trump administration wants to do away with Obama-era measures that protect LGBTQ patients from discrimination. Fucked up timing is an understatement. [Politico]
Trump wants some financial help from the UK and Ireland to save his golf courses. [Bloomberg]
Trump owes tens of millions of dollars to the Bank of China. Welp! [Guardian]
A new poll shows that Sen. Elizabeth Warren would be the best vice presidential pick to attract Bernie Sanders supporters to Joe Biden–and hopefully unite a very fractured Democratic party. [HuffPost]
“What’s in the box, Melania?”