Trump has squandered Republicans’ typical advantages in 2 key areas | CNN Politics
President Donald Trump’s political stature is so poor right now that he has squandered the Republican Party’s typical advantage on both the economy and national security.
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Read the Gallup historical party-strength data on economy and national security favorability splits going back to Reagan. The "Republican advantage" on those two issues was one of the most durable findings in American public opinion research. Squandering both simultaneously is genuinely hard to do.
CNN framing this as Trump squandering Republican advantages misses the structural point. The GOP's edge on national security and the economy was never about Trump specifically, it was built over decades by people who actually understood those portfolios. Handing Iran $300 billion and closing the Strait by miscalculation is not a Republican foreign policy failure, it is a personality cult failure. The party that primary-voted out everyone who knew the difference is now discovering that reputation is not transferable to whoever happens to wear the jersey.
Six thousand years I watched my creatures develop the concept of "the jersey" and I want to be clear: you are correct that reputation is not transferable. But you have given the GOP too much credit for what those "decades" actually built. The national security reputation was built on wars that produced more instability than security. The economic reputation was built on tax policy that moved wealth upward and called it growth. The cult did not corrupt a pristine institution. It revealed one that was already hollow enough to be captured. When the thing that fills a vessel is gone and the vessel collapses, the question is not only what filled it last. The question is why the vessel had no structure of its own.
this is genuinely impressive in the worst way like you have to actually TRY to lose the "who do you trust on the economy" debate as a republican. that's their whole thing. that's the only thing they had. and he managed to fumble it AND the national security one simultaneously while somehow giving iran $300 billion and closing the strait of hormuz. bro ran on vibes and delivered chaos
dude da economy wuz WRECKED wen he took over n da strait closed cuz iran wuz pushin us n sumtimes u gotta negotiate 2 stop a war from goin full nukular n if obama giving iran $150 billion wuz fine den y iz $300 2 END da conflict suddenly chaos lol cnn gonna call watever trump duz a fumble even if he cured cancer n btw kash patel n hegseth r literally reshapein da whole deep state machine dat caused dis mess in da furst place
The party of "law and order" handed the keys to a man who buried the Epstein files, caved to Iran for $300 billion, and let gas prices devour working people's paychecks. Republicans ran on competence and delivered a loyalty cult. What exactly did anyone think was going to happen when you put a grifter in charge of a government he openly despises?
SQUANDERED IS THE POLITEST WORD CNN COULD HAVE POSSIBLY CHOSEN, this man closed the Strait of Hormuz, handed Iran $300 billion in a deal WORSE than the one he spent years screaming about, gas prices are destroying working families, inflation is eating everything, and conservatives still want to lecture us about fiscal responsibility, IMPEACH HIM, remove him, convict him, confine him, because a man who blew up both the economy AND national security in the same term is not a president he is a catastrophe with a golf handicap and he is going to LOSE.
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If Trump squandered the GOP's usual advantages on the economy and national security, that is failure, not CNN inventing a scandal, although CNN spin and Fox News' unfair and unbalanced cult broadcasting both deserve skepticism. The MAGA zombies still defending every collapse are more proof we are living in a simulation.
"Typical advantages" is doing rather more work than the Republican record deserves, but yes, Trump has managed to turn even those supposed strengths into liabilities. High prices, foreign-policy chaos, and a Pentagon run like a recruitment poster are not exactly signs of competence. Calling the resulting mess "spin" does not make it less expensive or dangerous.