Unpresidented

The so-called president approval rating has fallen to 35 percent  in the Gallup daily tracking poll, equal to Lyndon Johnson in August 1968.

But LBJ had actually, you know, done stuff. The war in Vietnam seemed out of control, and his apparent lack of a plan for the war had pissed off both hawks and doves, and even Walter Cronkite. He’d been barred from attending the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The nation was reeling from various riots and assassinations. And so on. It was a rough time.

But with Trump, nothing has happened except for his own screwups. Trump dropped to 35 percent by being Trump.

Ronald Reagan also sank to 35 percent at the beginning of 1983, and obviously he recovered from that. At the beginning of 1983 people did not like the way Reagan was handling the economy. His big, splashy tax cuts — notably the “Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981” — hadn’t brought about the promised recovery. However, Gallup says,

His ratings moved back above 50% by November 1983 — not only because the economy was picking up, but also in part as a result of rally effects associated with the U.S. invasion of Grenada and the terrorist explosion that killed 241 American Marines in Beirut, Lebanon.

A sensible nation would have booted Reagan out of office for the invasion of Grenada and the slaughter of those Marines  — Ronald Reagan’s Benghazi. It’s possible we had already passed a point off no return into Crazy Land at that point.

But my point is that Trump appears to be sinking to a point of no return himself. He’s hit the lowest approval rating from which any POTUS has ever recovered. None have ever come back from 34 percent or lower. Note that Trump’s White House staff isn’t nearly as competent as Reagan’s, plus Donnie lacks Ronnie’s people skills.

Now for today’s oopsie: The geniuses in the Trump Brain Trust have realized that much of the border with Mexico is marked by a river. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke revealed that this poses a problem

“The border is complicated, as far as building a physical wall,” he said. “The Rio Grande, what side of the river are you going to put the wall? We’re not going to put it on our side and cede the river to Mexico. And we’re probably not going to put it in the middle of the river.”

— Wait, what? Does that mean they think they can build the wall on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande? Zinke didn’t specifically say that, this headline to the contrary. But if they don’t want to build it on the U.S. side, and they don’t want to build it down the middle of the bleeping river — where the hell else do they think they can put it?

Tune in soon for another episode of How Low Can He Go, or You Can’t Make This Shit Up.