President Donald Trump is “crashing out” in the polls, as well as in his willingness to accept their verdict, according to a former Republican strategist who advised President George W. Bush.“Donald Trump’s approval rating is crashing out,” Steve Schmidt posted on the social media platform X on Sunday morning. The post included a video in which Schmidt analyzed news reports showing Trump’s popularity plummeting in the polls.“Everybody sees all of this,” Schmidt said. “Clearly, support for Donald Trump is hitting as low as 30% in some polls, and in this one at 36% approval, 62% of the country not approving. And yet Trump thinks he’s more popular than ever.”Schmidt then included a quote from Trump saying that he has 100 percent approval rating, a number based on self-identified “MAGA Republican” who by definition are already Trump supporters.”I think I’m more popular than I ever have been,” Trump said. “Look, when he heard 100%, he said, ‘I’ve never seen a poll like this. This is the craziest poll I’ve ever seen.’ It was 100% of the people. And the reason is they like that I’m protecting our country from lunatics with a nuclear weapon.”Despite advising Republicans like Bush and the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Schmidt frequently denounces Trump, such as when he described the president’s unprovoked invasion of Iran as “madness” earlier in March.“My friends, it is all madness,” Schmidt said at the time. “The White House is an asylum. The president is deranged. He is a predator and criminal, and he is immoral, abusive and dishonest. He is a liar and charter member of the Epstein class.”Also earlier in March, Schmidt described Trump as “despised” before the world because of a number of crises arising from his policies including rising gas prices, humanitarian atrocities at home and the Iran war. He further predicted that gas prices “are going to go much higher. The first dead Americans have started to come home, but the story of American casualties is just beginning as the 82nd Airborne and US Marine expeditionary units prepare for an assault on Iranian territory.”Schmidt concluded at the time, “Prices are rising, airports have gone off the rails, gas is sky high, and America is losing a war to Iran because it was planned by fools. Everywhere there is disaster, and it has not gone unnoticed by the American people.”On another occasion discussing the Iran war, Schmidt speculated that Trump no longer felt obligated to strive for peace because he knows he will never win the Nobel Peace Prize.“He wanted the Peace Prize, and when he couldn’t get it, Trump lost his mind,” Schmidt said, then quoting a letter Trump wrote the Norwegian Prime Minister at the time complaining that he had been denied the prize.“Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America,” Trump told Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. “I’m no longer interested in it [the Peace Prize].”When speaking to this journalist for Salon Magazine shortly before the 2020 presidential election, psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee had an observation about Trump’s inability to accept rejection — whether of his impending loss or of declining approval ratings — because of narcissistic tendencies.“Those with pathological narcissism are abusive and dangerous because of their catastrophic neediness,” Lee told Salon at the time. “Think of a drowning person gasping for air: a survival instinct just may push you down in order to save one’s own life. In the manner that the body needs oxygen, the soul needs love, and self-love is what a toxic narcissist is desperately lacking. This is why he must overcompensate, creating for himself a self-image where he is the best at everything, never wrong, better than all the experts, and a ‘stable genius.’”
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