The most ineffectual Trump award goes to ....
by digby
Ivanka!
Ivanka Trump has quietly been calling lawmakers since the El Paso and Dayton massacres to gauge their openness to movement on gun legislation when Congress returns, sources familiar with her conversations tell Axios.
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... Ivanka Trump spoke last Wednesday to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), while he was vacationing in Hawaii, to get an update on the bipartisan background checks bill he proposed with Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.).
The measure, which was initially introduced in 2013 after the Sandy Hook shooting, would expand background checks to nearly all commercial firearm sales.
"She called Manchin and said she was trying to get a sense of what bills are out there," a Manchin aide told Axios.
As Steve M wryly notes:
Translation: Ivanka Trump has been not-so-quietly calling journalists, including those at Axios, to gauge their openness to writing stories favorable to Ivanka Trump on the subjects of gun legislation.
And needless to say, Ivanka's little PR push added up to nothing:
President Trump appears to be backing away from potential support for gun background check legislation, according to White House aides, congressional leaders and gun advocates, dimming prospects that Washington will approve significant new gun measures in the wake of mass shootings that left 31 dead.
Immediately after the carnage in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, Trump said “there is a great appetite” for tightening background checks on people who buy firearms. But in recent days, Trump has focused in public remarks on the need to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill while emphasizing that the nation already has “very strong background checks right now” — positions that hew more closely to the views of the National Rifle Association.
Trump is running a base strategy for re-election. He has no choice since nobody else can stand him. The idea that he would in any way anger the gun nuts is ludicrous.
They play this game every time --- the horrific bloodshed galvanizes the gun safety advocates and arouses the masses to demand action. The Republicans pretend to give a damn long enough for the issue o fall off the radar screen at which point it just .... goes away. Until the next time.
The only answer is to take the Republican party out of power and pass sensible gun safety measures. In the long term the country needs to deal with this insane gun culture.
As for Ivanka, Steve M has the full indictment. What a sadly useless person she is.
He closes with this:
I keep hearing that Ivanka Trump will be president someday, and I keep thinking: Who'd vote for her? Here she is pursuing gun control. That alienates the right. Here she is failing in her efforts to lobby her own father on behalf of modest gun control measures. That alienates everyone else. She displeases everyone. Why? Why does she keep doing this? What does she think is in it for her?
A recent New York magazine cover story claimed that Ivanka has a solid fan base in Trump country:
Long perceived by MAGA die-hards as a shifty liberal, Ivanka is now mostly beloved on the right, where she polls better than her father in the critical states of the industrial Midwest, leading to speculation on mid-tier news sites that she might replace Mike Pence on the 2020 ticket and to fans’ dreams about Ivanka 2024.
In fact, Ivanka's poll numbers in those Midwestern states are mediocre:
In a Firehouse Strategies and 0ptimus poll released Sunday, Ivanka Trump was net favorable in Pennsylvania at 38-35 as well as Michigan at 37-36. The first daughter had a net disapproval rating of 35-39 in Wisconsin, but her favorability among likely general election voters surpassed her father's. She was +3 versus the president at -3 in Pennsylvania, +1 compared to his -5 in Michigan, and -4 to his -7 in Wisconsin.
"While not by overwhelming margins, Ivanka Trump maintains better net favorability among likely voters in these three states than her father does," the poll report states.
That could be the slogan for Ivanka in 2024: Awful, but Not by Overwhelming Margins.
I'll bet the margins will be overwhleming by 2024.
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