Broad disapproval of Trump's national emergency mirrors a critical 2020 problem for Trump
By Philip Bump
February 19 at 10:38 AM
We’re pretty far down a tricky path for President Trump, whose promises on the 2016 campaign trail to build a wall on the border with Mexico were never likely to come to fruition given the process for getting legislation passed by Congress. Much of the focus on Trump’s bold assertions focused on his proclamations that Mexico would cover the costs for the wall, but the wall itself, particularly as described by Trump and particularly once it became intermingled with Trump’s views on immigration, faced a rocky path forward.
Over the past two months, the bumpiness of the path became manifest: Trump blocked government funding to try to force Democrats to capitulate; they didn’t; he took the loss. But on Friday, Trump launched a last-ditch effort to move the wall forward, declaring a national emergency focused on the border, potentially allowing him to allocate money to get it built. The courts will probably decide if that happens.
The move is not popular. As our Aaron Blake wrote on Tuesday morning, a new NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll shows that only about a third of the country thinks the declaration was a good idea. As you might expect, Republicans were more supportive than Democrats.
The shape of that graph should, by now, be familiar. Low overall support that mirrors how independents feel, with partisans at either end of the spectrum. HuffPost’s Ariel Edwards-Levy made a joke about it, following the release of a HuffPost-YouGov poll that showed much the same result.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/19/broad-disapproval-trumps-national-emergency-mirrors-critical-problem-trump/