Americans Just Aren't Into Trump's Stupid Ballroom, Arch, Reflecting Pool, Banana Stand
Heck, the poll didn't even include his new flying bordello from Qatar.
Americans really don’t like all the stupid shit Donald Trump wants to do to Washington DC, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll (gift link) conducted this month. The findings were part of a broader poll (another gift link) that yet again shows Trump is very unpopular with everyone outside the MAGA faithful (still around 30 percent). That poll also found most Americans are pessimistic about the economy, don’t think Trump’s stupid tax cuts have helped them, and don’t approve of Trump’s stupid Iran War.
But we’re going to focus here on the part of the Post-Ipsos poll that specifically asked what people thought of Trump’s stupid plans to uglify Washington DC with a stupid ugly ballroom, a stupid ugly victory arch at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery, and a stupid ugly bright blue coating for the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool. The poll
asked more than 2,600 U.S. adults whether they feel “enthusiastic,” “satisfied,” “dissatisfied” or “upset” about the trio of projects in Washington. The nationwide survey also asked whether people think Trump is trying to “make Washington more beautiful” or has a different goal in mind.
Phrasing the questions differently might have gotten very different results, if only because we bet even more people would have expressed a strongly negative view if the poll had used a word other than “upset,” which some people might avoid because it sounds too prissy. I’m not “upset” that Trump tore down an entire wing of the White House and wants to spend billions on stupid monuments to himself — which may also serve as a final bunker at the end. I’m fucking pissed off.
That quibble aside, respondents’ opinions were in fact overwhelmingly negative, with 65 percent saying they’re either dissatisfied or fucking pissed off upset, and only 32 percent expressing satisfaction or enthusiasm about the stupid monstrosities.
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Anyway, here are the responses to the question “Trump has ordered construction of a new ballroom at the White House, painting the national mall’s reflecting pool and construction of a triumphal arch in Northern Virginia. Overall, how do you feel about these projects?”
The Post decided to represent the responses with little dots representing each respondent, instead of a respectable bar graph, even though we think the dots take up way too much space and don’t add anything to a reader’s understanding. We could be wrong. Maybe the mostly upset/dissatisfied dots look like a Reflecting Pool full of angry voters? Discuss among yourselves.
So yeah, that’s a lot of people who don’t like Trump’s stupid uglification projects, at least when the three are grouped together. (The Post notes that other polls show disapproval of the projects on an individual basis, too.) Only 12 percent claimed to be “enthusiastic” about the three proposed Trump autofellation monuments, and we suspect marketers of Trump-branded crap would kill to get their contact information. The biggest slice of the pie was the 38 percent of Americans who said they were “upset,” especially because the pie tastes like demolition debris, gold spray paint, and algae.
The Post did at least follow the dotty graph with a more conventional bar graph presenting the partisan breakdown in those answers.
Not surprisingly, MAGA Republicans were, in defiance of the old Martin Mull joke, happily dancing about Trump’s stupid architecture, with 43 percent “enthusiastic,” another 43 percent merely “satisfied,” and only 11 percent “dissatisfied.” You have to check the poll’s crosstabs to see that only two percent of MAGAs are “upset” by the planned obscenities, and some of them may have thought the designs needed more heads on pikes.
Also too, as the Post points out, Democrats and independents have a far stronger negative reaction to Trump’s stupid fashy monuments than the share of Republicans who think positively about the mess.
The disparity in strong opinions is even larger, echoing views of Trump himself. A 67 percent majority of Democrats say they are “upset” by the projects, compared with 31 percent of Republicans who say they are “enthusiastic.” That pattern holds even among the ideological wings of each party, with 79 percent of liberal Democrats saying they are upset about Trump’s projects versus 43 percent of self-identified MAGA Republicans.
The replies to the second half of the question, about what people think Trump’s stupid motives are, were also pretty telling. Only 26 percent said they believe he wants to “make Washington more beautiful,” while 51 percent said they think he has a different goal and a substantial 22 percent said they weren’t sure.
The pollsters asked the 51 percent of those who suspected Trump had another goal to say what they thought it was, in their own words. The biggest portion of replies, 42 percent, chalked it up to Trump’s ego, vanity, or his desire to “glorify himself.” Another 22 percent said, in various ways, that he wanted to leave his stupid mark on history or keep his name prominent in Washington, which has a bit of overlap with the “ego” responses, obviously.
About eight percent of folks said the goal was financial corruption, either to steer money to Trump or his family, or to reward supportive contractors, which makes sense, reflecting the reliable instinct that Trump is out to make a profit from presidenting. Oh, and a laughable two percent said they thought Trump is simply trying to restore American patriotism and pride in our wonderful beautiful stupid country.
The Post adds, in a final paragraph that seems written to keep Jeff Bezos happy, that while those polled were indeed pissed off at how Trump wants to deface Washington, such opinions’ “political impact may be limited.” After all, when the poll asked people to name the “three biggest factors” in their likely votes for the midterm elections, “nobody mentioned the White House ballroom, arch or Reflecting Pool.”
Well sure. When a madman is trying to destroy democracy, rig the economy for the investor-donor class, and create a white rightwing theocratic autocracy, those concerns are definitely greater than the stupid gaudy ornaments Great Leader surrounds himself with.
But people do tend to link corrupt leaders not only with their atrocities, but also with their ridiculous aesthetic excesses, too. Just think of the visceral reactions people have to what Mad King Donald has done to the Oval Office.
Americans may not say they’re voting against Trump because of all that stupid gold-painted crap, but they will inevitably remember him as the wannabe dictator who couldn’t stop adding stupid gold accents to everything in sight. It is, as Sir Terry Pratchett put it, gilt by association.
[WaPo Trump stupid DCprojects poll (gift link) / WaPo Trump performance poll (gift link) WaPo-Ipsos poll crosstabs]
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There's going to be an awful lot of shit that needs to be razed after Shartyfartblast sharts his last shart. Lot's of cheap Chinese gold plated plastic shit will need to be disposed of somehow. It's not going to be pretty. Trump's turning everything into tawdry shite.
As a kid, I used to do calligraphy. There were pens you could buy that had gold paint in them, but they were hard to use as you needed to shake them just so to mix it each time and then hope you would apply enough pressure that the paint rather than just the solvent would come out but not so much it would just flood everything. There were also pens that would not do this, but which had the drawback of not looking like actual gold.
Anyway, the colour of his ornaments and arabesques is that of the second kind.