The Outsider Perspective Issue 421 | The Beltway Outsiders

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Good Friday Morning! Especially to Nigel Richards of New Zealand, who won a staggering 8th world championship in Scrabble competitions. He holds five titles in English competitions (U.S. and British English) and two in French. His latest victory came in the Spanish tournament.

Here’s the kicker: he speaks neither French nor Spanish. He took a crash course in both languages before entering the competition, but he can’t speak to anyone in French or Spanish. However, he is the world’s best Scrabble player in those languages.

In a 2010 interview, his mother quipped, “I don’t think he’s ever read a book, apart from the dictionary.”

I grew up reading Encyclopedia Brown books and thought that fictional kid was cool given how smart he was from reading encyclopedias. Dictionary Brown doesn’t have the same ring to it.

In any event, this week, I’m going to cover the somewhat astonishing data showing that Donald Trump is a popular President for the first time in his political career—links to follow.

Quick Hits:

The Federal Reserve targeted 2% on inflation. The latest CPI report showed prices ticking up again, with overall inflation sitting at 2.7% annually and core inflation sitting at 3.3%. Inflation isn’t over; it will be a looming problem for Trump as he takes office. The Fed will have to confront whether or not it can continue cutting rates. Otherwise, there’s a real argument inflation could go back up. Nick Timiraos at the WSJ called this the “bumpy road” to fixing inflation and indicated the Fed could slow rate cuts. Jerome Powell’s nightmare is that the Fed has cut rates too early, and he’s made a policy mistake in cutting interest rates. Trump has no desire to keep those high interest rates, and he knows the danger of high rates as a real estate developer. Whether he’ll get what he wants is another story.

Where you can find me this week

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Horse Race Ep. 018: Biden’s Pardon Crisis | Trump Transition Is Popular | Dems Civil War Brewing…

Donald Trump Should Cut Off The United Nations Over Funding Hamas Terrorists – Conservative Institute

Luigi Mangione Is No Hero – Conservative Institute

Liberal Journalists Accidentally Boost Pete Hegseth’s Nomination – Conservative Institute

Donald Trump Is… Popular?

Leading into the election. I said several times that Donald Trump had a chance to win the electoral college and the popular vote. Given the data, I thought the second part was a long shot, but it was still possible. Here’s something I didn’t anticipate even with that: Donald Trump is actually popular.

It’s natural to think that since at no point in Donald Trump’s political career has he held a positive favorability rating in the polling averages. Trump has never had an even favorability rating; it’s always been negative. That changed this week. RealClearPolitics favorable/unfavorable tracker moved Trump into the positive range for the first time ever for Trump, going back to 2015.

Currently, Trump is up by two points in this measure, which favorably reflects on Trump’s transition period. Polls from CNN, CBS News, and Fox News all show that Americans broadly approve of Trump’s nominations and how he’s handling the transition process.

On the flip side, Joe Biden is still deeply unpopular, and his approval numbers have sunk further since Hunter Biden’s pardon. Also, Kamala Harris has lost her luster in the country’s eyes. She’s back to being an unpopular politician andlooks to continue sliding back to her previous standing. That balloon has popped, and it is one of many reasons I do not believe she has a political future on the national stage in 2028.

In hindsight, the most telling anecdote from the closing weeks of the campaign was Democratic Senate candidates across the Midwest cutting pro-Trump ads. That told you more about reality on the ground than any journalist sitting in some random diner talking to patrons.

We’re in the honeymoon period for the incoming Trump administration. What’s remarkable is how quickly it has started, the total dispersion of partisan anger flying around, and a general calming of the waters. That’s somewhat strange to say with the awful shoot of a CEO in broad daylight, but the broader point holds.

In the days following the election, I wrote about how the left was tuning out. We’re finally getting hard data on that. MSNBC and CNN are in a ratings tailspin. MSNBC will have to rebrand in the coming months as it prepares for a new future, and CNN is in the tank.

Meanwhile, Fox News is booming, and conservative media in general is doing fine. Donald Trump is getting named as Time’s “Person of the Year,” and his international trip to France over the reopening of Notre Dame was deeply important. Europeans have moved past Biden and are negotiating directly with Trump.

Trump may not be sworn in until January 20, but he’s effectively the president now, especially in foreign affairs. For years, I’d noted how absent Biden was in everything. Numerous foreign leaders tried to fill the void, but that’s gone. It’s transparently clear that everyone believes that Trump is the real leader.

And again – he’s popular. That’s the part that’s forcing as much movement as anything. Politicians at all levels aren’t stupid on that point: they understand Donald Trump is broadly popular, and they’ve shifted accordingly. This realization is why you’ll see him get what he wants on the nominee front.

Matt Gaetz was a different ball of wax because he was hated on an unfathomable level in Congress. None of Trump’s other nominees fits that description.

That brings me to this next term: I don’t believe it will be marked by the utter chaos of the first term, especially the first two years. Trump had no idea what he was doing in 2016, and neither did his advisors. That led to things like the border executive orders that caused chaos in airports. They’re being smarter this time.

For instance, here’s a low-hanging piece of fruit Trump is planning that’s perfectly legal and difficult for Democrats to oppose. Tom Homan, Trump’s new border czar, said:

“President Trump made it clear we will prioritize public safety threats and national security threats first. That’s what the focus will be. There are over 1.5 million convicted criminal aliens in this country with orders for removal who we’ll be looking for, there are thousands of gang members we’ll be looking for.

“If you’re in the country illegally, you shouldn’t feel comfortable, absolutely not. I wouldn’t feel comfortable if I were in another country illegally; you shouldn’t be comfortable either,” Homan added. “When you enter this country illegally, you have committed a crime. You’re a criminal, and you’re not off the table.”

Both New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker have said they agree with parts of this – Pritzker focusing on “violent” illegal immigrants. The low-hanging fruit here is tagging illegals already jailed or convicted and kicking them out.

When you describe that policy to most Americans, they’re going to support it overwhelmingly. If Trump sticks to those easy wins early on, he’ll spend very little political capital and get broad wins. He can compare himself to Biden opening things up and causing chaos at the border versus Trump keeping things under control.

If Trump can stick to the easy wins early on, he’ll continue with this honeymoon period because it’ll be hard for Democrats to oppose. Pritzker is notable here because he’s an early name for Democrats in 2028. I don’t view him as very serious. Still, he’s trying to position himself as a new leader of the Democratic Party.

That’s the bizarre place we are now: Donald Trump is so popular that potential 2028 candidates are trying to work with him on his number one issue: immigration.

I want you to think back to the beginning of 2024, when it was clear Donald Trump was headed toward trials and potential convictions before the election, and look at where we are now. If you time-traveled and told yourself what the political landscape is now versus then, you probably wouldn’t believe it.

Trump’s comeback is the greatest in American history. It’s better than Nixon returning to power after losing to Kennedy (if you want some conspiracy theories of a stolen election… start there. Nixon was paranoid for a reason). You’d be hard-pressed to find anything else like Trump in American history.

He went from impeachments and convictions to becoming a broadly popular President for the first time in his political career. Will that eventually change? Of course… these things called “events” derail the best plans of every president. However, Trump now has more power and political capital than he did in 2016.

He’s a popular populist president. No one saw that coming 12 months ago.

Links of the week

Donald Trump: 2024 TIME Person of the Year – Time Magazine

Jimmy Carter 2.0: Yet another Democratic presidency ends in disaster – Jay Cost, Washington Examiner

Pardon envy: Democrats vie to make the Biden pardon list – Jonathan Turley, The Hill

Daniel Penny’s Innocence—and the Shame of Alvin Bragg: A just verdict for Daniel Penny does not erase the cynical, wrongheaded, and unwarranted prosecution. – The Free Press

The Vibe Shift Goes Global: At home, Yale Law School and DEI committees are out. Abroad, strength and escalation are in. – Niall Ferguson, The Free Press

Biden commutes sentence for Kids-for-Cash judge – The Citizens Voice

Youngkin to draft sanctuary city ban, making state funding contingent on ICE cooperation: Violence is ‘being enabled by some local governments,’ Youngkin said – Fox News

What Does Sleeping with 100 Men in One Day Do to the Soul? An unsettling new documentary about an OnlyFans star—and the real price of sex work. – The Free Press

Shabbat for Protestants: As part of a growing trend among American churches, an evangelical congregation in Dallas weaves elements of Jewish ritual and liturgy into its Christian service – Tablet Magazine

X/Twitter Thread(s) of the week