Trump is right to ignore polls

OPINION:

A new survey from Decision Desk HQ for NewsNation shows 56 percent of registered voters disapprove of President Trump’s job performance, a number that puts him below the performance results of polling of his presidential predecessors.

Another day, another poll. Yawn. The Democrats, corporate media, Republicans who hate Trump and all the anti-MAGAs out there would have the nation believe the administration is now supposed to switch directions and turn tail on tariffs, on deportations, on all the agendas and actions this president promised to take before he even took office.

But Trump is quite right in ignoring the numbers and plowing ahead with his agenda. It’s what principled leaders do: They lead. 

Good leaders lead and block out the noisy chatterings of the sometimes adversarial masses and stay true to Original Vision. And they do that while still listening to trusted sources who tell them when it is indeed time to switch tactics. They do that while still recognizing that the masses are not the voices of peons, but rather the citizens who pay their salaries and therefore, worthy of respect — which is not the same as blind obedience, however. They do that while holding fast to a higher power for guidance on good governance — in this country, God and Constitution — and knowing that so long as their vision is aligned with these higher powers, the noisy chatterings are just that: distractions that should be ignored.

In the end, a good leader with a principled map for governance accepts the role and responsibility as the ultimate decision-maker.

It’s only the most courageous who can stand strong in the face of adversity.

Trump is that leader.

“Voters sour on Trump job performance at 100-day mark,” The Hill wrote in a headline, citing the DDHQ/NewsNation poll.

“Trump’s sagging poll numbers become a concern for GOP,” The Hill wrote in a separate story about recent polls.

“1 in 4 Trump Voters Disappointed or Regret Voting For Him: ‘I’m Scared,’” Newsweek wrote, citing a Navigator Research survey.

Voters are fickle. Politics are deceptive and politicians, schooled in the art of deceiving. Polls are manipulable. And members of the media seek out the clickable. For instance, this Newsweek story was based on a survey of 1,000 registered voters over a four-day period and cited an anonymous independent male voter from Michigan who said, or more to truth, reportedly said, “I had never voted for a candidate in a long time. I should have voted third party. I just wasted my vote at this point because I’m not happy. … I’m scared that we’re going to become a dictatorship.”

From that, the headline “I’m Scared” — implying, of course, that this feeling is shared among many, if not most, Trump voters. Read a bit down the story, though, and Newsweek writes this: “The vast majority of(73 percent) of Trump voters neither regret their vote, nor feel disappointed by his first few months back in the Oval Office.”

So goes the typical reporting on horse race polling.

Principled leaders know to ignore such nonsense. 

In fact, even Democrats know polls are very often nonsense.

In 1998, liberal-turned-conservative-turned-back-to-liberal news influencer Arianna Huffington, sick and tired of the surveys that said Americans supported then-President Clinton despite his scandalous sexual affair with intern Monica Lewinsky and his subsequent finger-wagging lies to the entire nation, wrote, The Quill reported: “Lengthy articles are written about such horse race polls, which are then circulated by handlers and fund raisers to convince donors and [Political Action Committees] that the other candidates are already out of [the race]. Snapshots harden into portraits; predictions become coronations. … When the history books are written, the Clinton crisis will be the first political crisis to be so entirely driven and shaped by polls.”

Hopefully, when Trump’s history is written, it will show he stood firm against the polls, ignored the naysayers and nail-biters and haters, and brought the golden age back to America.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.