A new poll found Donald Trump’s approval rating has slipped to 29% after he incited a violent mob of his supporters to storm the US Capitol last week.
According to a Pew Research Center survey, Trump is leaving the White House with the lowest approval rating of his presidency.
About two-thirds of Americans, 68%, say Trump should not remain a major political figure in the years to come. (Trump has toyed with the idea of a 2024 run for the White House.)
And a narrow majority of Americans, 54%, say it would be better for the country if Trump were removed from office and Mike Pence served out the final days of his term.
In a stark contrast, Joe Biden received generally positive marks from survey respondents, with 64% saying they approve of the president-elect’s conduct since the election.
DoJ inspector general launches review of Capitol riot
The justice department inspector general announced his office is launching a review of the violent events at the Capitol last week.
Michael Horowitz said in a statement that his office would coordinate its review with those already underway by the inspector generals of the defense department, homeland security department and interior department.
“The DoJ OIG review will include examining information relevant to the January 6 events that was available to DoJ and its components in advance of January 6; the extent to which such information was shared by DoJ and its components with the US Capitol Police and other federal, state and local agencies; and the role of DoJ personnel in responding to the events at the US Capitol on January 6,” Horowitz said in a statement.
“The DoJ OIG also will assess whether there are any weaknesses in DoJ protocols, policies, or procedures that adversely affected the ability of DoJ or its components to prepare effectively for and respond to the events at the US Capitol on January 6.”
Reports indicate a field office at the FBI, an agency that falls under the justice department’s command, warned of “war” at the Capitol a day before the violent riot took place.
This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.
Here’s what the blog is keeping an eye on today: Joe Bidenis set to deliver remarks on his plans to distribute coronavirus vaccines at 3.15pm ET.
The speech comes one day after Biden laid out his proposal for another massive coronavirus relief package to help American families who are financially struggling as a result of the pandemic.
The proposal would cost $1.9tn, and it includes $1,400 in direct payment checks for all Americans. The bill would also increase weekly supplemental unemployment insurance to $400 a week.
In terms of vaccines, Biden has previously said he wants to distribute 100m doses during his first 100 days in office, but his team has reportedly expressed some skepticism about achieving that because of how the Trump administration has handled the vaccine rollout so far.
Biden’s speech is still coming up later today, so stay tuned.
Kevin Liptak and Kaitlan Collins at CNN this morning have a look at what Donald Trump has been up to in his final days in office, finding that contrary to the repeated White House mantra that the president “will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,” instead:
On Thursday, it was Mike Pence carrying out tasks ordinarily left to a president, like visiting national guardsmen posted at the US Capitol or visiting White House operators to say farewell.
Liptak and Collins report that:
Aides have pleaded with Trump to deliver some type of farewell address, either live or taped, that would tick through his accomplishments in office. But he has appeared disinterested and noncommittal.
Trump has been consumed by the unraveling of his presidency. And he has made clear to aides in separate conversations that mere mention of president Richard Nixon, the last president to resign, was banned.
He told one adviser during an expletive-laden conversation recently never to bring up the ex-president ever again. During the passing mention of resigning this week, Trump told people he couldn’t count on Pence to pardon him like Gerald Ford did Nixon, anyway.
And there’s this …
President Trump apparently wants a big going away party. CNN reports he's expressed interest in a military-style sendoff and a crowd of supporters, according to a person with whom he has discussed the matter.
Some more grim Covid-impacted economic news this morning, as retail sales declined further in December as measures to slow the pandemic undercut spending at restaurants and reduced traffic to shopping malls.
Retail sales dropped 0.7% last month, the commerce department said. Data for November was revised down to show sales declining 1.4% instead of 1.1% as previously reported.
The figures are concerning because they represent a period when the Covid infection rate was not as high as it currently is – the last 10 consecutive days have seen the country record over 200,000 new cases daily. The holiday season is also traditionally an important period for retail sales.
Reuters report that excluding automobiles, gasoline, building materials and food services, retail sales tumbled 1.9% last month. These so-called core retail sales correspond most closely with the consumer spending component of gross domestic product.
The report followed in the wake of news last week that the economy shed jobs in December – the first time the number had dipped in eight months. Further job losses are likely in January as new applications for unemployment benefits surged in the first week of the month. The data are in line with economists’ expectations for a sharp slowdown in economic growth in the fourth quarter.
Though Trump used his personal account, @realDonaldTrump, as his primary social media mouthpiece, Biden’s aides think it’s unfair Twitter isn’t handing over followers along with the official accounts.
“They are advantaging Trump’s first days of the administration over ours,” Rob Flaherty, the transition’s digital director said. “If we don’t end the day with the 12 million followers that Trump inherited from Obama, then they have given us less than they gave him, and that is a failure.”
Twitter views the new @PresElectBiden as an accommodation that helps resolve the dispute over the official accounts. A Twitter spokesperson said the company’s goal was to support the archiving and transition of accounts across administrations.
There’s a contrast at Twitter with the way that other companies are managing the change, as Epstein elaborates:
Both Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram will duplicate the millions of followers currently following the Trump White House accounts to follow new Biden White House accounts.
“We’re following the same procedures we used during the transfer between the Obama and Trump administration,” Facebook spokeswoman Dani Lever said.
The copying of followers means that Biden’s administration will start off with a large, built-in audience for the president-elect that will include many people who aren’t Biden supporters – people his team are eager to reach.
Epstein notes that the incoming administration will also inherit the followers of the Trump White House’s official YouTube channel.
When he’s not tweeting about himself, the secretary of state still has a job to do until the Biden administration takes power next week. Reuters have a quick snap just now that the US plans to announce additional Iran sanctions today, related to conventional arms and to the metals industry.
Sources, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, did not provide details on the sanctions, the latest in a series that Donald Trump has imposed on the Iranian economy to try to force Tehran into a new negotiation on curbing its nuclear program.
The US president in 2018 abandoned the Iran nuclear agreement that Tehran struck with six major powers in 2015 to rein in its nuclear program in return for relief from US and international sanctions that had crippled its economy.
When he walked away from the deal, Trump said he was open to negotiating a much wider pact that would seek more extensive constraints on Iran’s nuclear program. He has not secured such a pact. Joe Biden has said he will return to the 2015 agreement if Iran resumes strict compliance with it.
Regular readers of this blog will know how much I have been enjoying secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s near constant me-me-me tweet storms since the start of the year, all on an official US government account.
As my colleague Julian Borger put it in his excellent “last days of Pompeo” piece yesterday:
The last days of Pompeo have been played out in a blizzard of self-congratulatory tweets, at the rate of two dozen a day, as he seeks to write his own first draft of history.
The former Kansas congressman, with evident ambitions for a presidential run in 2024, has accented his claims of success by frequent derogatory references to the previous administration, portrayed as hapless appeasers. The political point-scoring and aggrandizement have made the use of the megaphone provided by a government Twitter account, with 3 million followers.
It is not the first time Pompeo has used government resources for personal ends. The state department inspector general was investigating him for using state department staff to run private errands, like picking up dry cleaning and walking the dog, when Pompeo had him fired last May.
Trump’s permanently suspended Twitter account. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Anyway, nevertheless overnight Joe Biden’s team have opened the new account that will become @POTUS – it is currently @PresElectBiden. I’m sure we can expect the first Breitbart/Fox article gloatingly comparing their respective follower numbers by Wednesday afternoon.
Also pondering the future for the Republican party is Alex Isenstadt at Politico, who today writes that a diminished Trump leaves a vacuum for 2024 Republican hopefuls.
While some are gradually separating themselves from the president, others are publicizing plans to bolster the party as it heads into the post-Trump era. Some are even sparring with other potential 2024 rivals in plain sight, marking a strikingly early start to public presidential maneuvering.
“While President Trump is likely to remain the most influential voice in the GOP for the foreseeable future, the events of the last week could provide more running room and potentially open the door to more candidates in 2024,” said Phil Cox, a former Republican Governors Association executive director.
Republicans note that without the threat of Trump’s Twitter feed, candidates are freer to separate themselves from him without fear of reprisals. The president used the account as his primary tool of imposing discipline on the party.
Part of the willingness to break with Trump also reflects a calculation that Trump’s once iron-like grip on the party has loosened. According to a POLITICO/Morning Consult survey released Wednesday, Trump’s approval rating among Republicans is 75 percent, down from 83 percent in December. The same poll found that just 40 percent of Republicans would support Trump in a 2024 primary — still in first place, but with a majority saying they’d prefer someone else.
