How America came to hate FJB

Inflation, immigration, Afghanistan and Trump have done him in

People forget that before there were chants of FJB, he was pretty popular. He had a plus 23 rating on job approval as his presidency began and six months later he was at plus 9.6, a very respectable score. Trump was never anywhere close to 9.6 — even on his inauguration day.

Biden was the most unknown president since William Howard Taft to the American people. Most people knew two things about Biden: 1) he was Obama’s VP and 2) he wasn’t Donald Trump. Three years ago, Americans saw No. 2 as a good thing.

On July 22, 2021, Disney’s 538 gushed, “The first six months in the White House are often frenzied for presidents as they push for big policy changes to try to live up to their campaign promises. President Biden is no exception. In his first 100 days in office, he signed dozens of executive actions and pursued sweeping legislation, like his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package, which offered Americans further relief from the pandemic, and his ambitious two-step infrastructure plan. The hope for Biden, as with most presidents, is that his accomplishments will placate Americans who already support him while also winning over some who don’t.

“But as it turns out, few Americans have changed their minds since the 2020 election. Biden’s job approval rating over his first six months in office was the steadiest such rating of any recent president during that period, according to FiveThirtyEight’s historical approval rating data. His approval has ranged from a high of 55.1% on March 22 to a low of 51.1% on July 15 — a difference of just 4 percentage points.”

Then came August. As the month began, his approval was 50.8% and his disapproval was 42.8%. That was a plus 8-point approval.

September began with his disapproval at 47.2% and his approval at 46.8% — a deficit of 0.4 points. FJB’s approval has been underwater ever since. His deficit was 17.8 points on Saturday.

I would like to think he was done in by a photograph of him looking at his watch as he reviewed the caskets of 13 American troops killed by the Taliban. This was deliberate. He looked at his watch several times during the ceremony at the airfield in Dover, Delaware.

It also was reminiscent of George H.W. Bush checking his watch during a debate with Bill Clinton.

But realistically, the photo of Biden wanting to get the ceremony over with had little if any impact. Oh, people like me cared but we already disapprove of the guy.

His haphazard surrender of Afghanistan did him in. The public saw that he left behind billions of dollars worth of military equipment in a manner reminiscent of Vietnam, a war that helped catapult him into the Senate as a peacenik.

The difference in 2021 was Americans didn’t much care about Afghanistan because no one was drafted to fight it, the protests were few, and the feeling was that we had won. Ditching Afghanistan did him in.

College football crowds began chanting Fuck Joe Biden. This shocked me because college students are supposed to be socialist tools who just repeat whatever their pinko professors say. The media tried to ignore the chants but when the chants hit NASCAR, the media had to notice. Instead of telling the truth, they lied.

The lie backfired.

AP reported, “It started at an Oct. 2, 2021. NASCAR race at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama. Brandon Brown, a 28-year-old driver, had won his first Xfinity Series and was being interviewed by an NBC Sports reporter [Kelli Stavast]. The crowd behind him was chanting something at first difficult to make out. The reporter suggested they were chanting ‘Let’s go, Brandon’ to cheer the driver. But it became increasingly clear they were saying: ‘F—- Joe Biden.’”

That lie hurt Biden because it gave Biden’s critics a G-rated way of conveying the message, which made it mainstream among disappointed Biden supporters. AP called it “coded crudity.” Well, reporters had better learn to code better because they were the ones who made it possible to say FJB without saying it. Trump supporters should thank Kelli Stavast for being dishonest. Had she told the truth, the FJB chant likely would have died a natural death.

Inflation started kicking in, but Biden found a way to hide it and actually closed his disapproval gap to minus 9.8 points a year later by giving what he called a Dark Brandon speech in Philadelphia in August 2022 which he portrayed his opponents as evil threats to democracy because they did not vote Democrat.

Conservatives mocked the speech but it took the wind out of the sails of Republican efforts in the congressional races. Of course the refusal of Ronna the Prima Donna McDaniels to address Democrat cheating and her refusal to help Trump-backed candidates were the real blow. Romney is the Mormon word for backstabber.

Enter Greg Abbott. I know many conservatives don’t like the governor of Texas but he did something I never imagined possible. He split Democrats on immigration by shipping illegal aliens to all those sanctuary cities. Suddenly Democrats were crying foul. The cries from New York, Chicago, Denver and DC were that there were too many illegal aliens.

Duh.

Abbott made it an issue and converted many a Democrat to President Trump’s position on immigration. They say a conservative is a liberal who got mugged. Illegal aliens are mugging plenty of Biden supporters.

Now having surrendered Afghanistan in his first August and having gone Dark Brandon in his second August, in his third August Biden prayed for and received what he thought was manna from heaven: a mugshot of President Trump.

Biden mocked the mugshot.

The Independent invited readers to “Watch a smiling Joe Biden call Donald Trump’s mugshot ‘handsome.’”

BBC understood American politics better than the Independent and the hyenas in the American pressbox. Trump used that mugshot to raise millions of dollars. He rose in the polls. BBC said:

Within minutes of the picture being released, it appeared on Mr. Trump's website along with a statement saying he had been arrested despite committing no crime. "What has taken place is a travesty of justice," it said, along with a call for campaign contributions.

Mugshots have destroyed other political careers. For him, it has already become a campaign symbol.

In fact, in a matter of hours his official campaign was selling T-shirts featuring the image. "NEVER SURRENDER," they read. Mugs and stickers are also available.

It is yet another example of how Mr. Trump continues to defy political gravity.

Indeed, the whole ordeal of the lawsuits and indictments has turned on those crafty Democrats. Judge Merchan is doing all he can to limit Trump’s campaigning by confining him to New York City.

That’s a big mistake.

AP reported, “New York made Donald Trump and could convict him. But for now, he’s using it to campaign.”

The story said, “After leaving court Thursday, Trump made another stop, heading to a midtown Manhattan firehouse with boxes of pizza in hand. Trump spent about 10 minutes shaking hands, posing for photos and chatting with several dozen firefighters and other personnel there before returning to Trump Tower for the night.

The felony trial has curtailed Trump’s ability to campaign across the country. But it also means Trump is often spending four days a week in the nation’s media capital, with access to ready-made locations for campaign events that he can use to court voters as he tries to reclaim the White House.”

This weekend, he left Trump Tower, New York, and went to New Jersey.

Fox reported, “After a long week in court, Donald Trump is at the Jersey Shore. And he was greeted by thousands of his friends.

“Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, drew what his team called a mega crowd of tens of thousands to a Saturday evening rally in the southern New Jersey resort town of Wildwood. It was being held 150 miles south of the New York City courthouse where he has been forced to spend most weekdays sitting silently through his felony hush money trial.

“Lisa Fagan, spokesperson for the city of Wildwood, told the Associated Press that she estimated the crowd represented between 80,000 and 100,000 attendees, based off her own observations on the scene Saturday, having seen dozens of other events in the same space.

“The beachfront gathering, described by Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., as the largest political gathering in state history, was designed to serve as a show of force at a critical moment for Trump, who is facing dozens of felony charges in four separate criminal cases with the election less than six months away. There is a real possibility that Trump could be a convicted felon by Election Day.”

Nostalgia for President Trump grows.

Breitbart reported, “The Republican Party is enjoying an 11-point swing their way against the Democrat Party as the number of Americans expressing affiliation with their party has increased.

“A Gallup poll conducted between April 1 and 22 showed that the Republican Party was enjoying a net average of 11 points in voters expressing affiliation with their party over the Democrats, compared to results in 2016.”

The large turnout in New Jersey was predictable because Americans know this is another political witch hunt from the people who gave us the Mueller report and two impeachments. Democrats keep doing the same thing over and over again — expecting better results each time.

I am not calling their efforts a failure, but Gallup reported a few weeks ago, “Biden's 13th-Quarter Approval Average Lowest Historically. Averages 38.7% job approval.”

Trump was at 46.8% in his 13th quarter.

FJB’s presidency will get a fourth August in three months. We will see how he blows it.