Why Are Republican Congressional Leaders Stocking Up On Nexium?

Hot new poll from ABC and the Washington Post must be painful for GOP leaders who put all their eggs into the Trumpanzee basket. Disapproval is at a new all-time high (60%), support for the Mueller investigation is broad and-- at long last-- half of Americans favor Congress initiating impeachment proceedings against the Putin puppet and illegitimate occupant of the White House. Just 36% of Americans approval of the way Trump has been performing in the White House, so-- by his own flawed logical-- he can be impeached. And 49% think he should be (although 46% still aren't ready for that).

Suspicions of the president relating to the Mueller investigation are substantial. Sixty-one percent say that if assertions by Cohen are true, Trump broke the law. Fifty-three percent also think Trump obstructed special counsel Robert Mueller’s work... Americans overall back Mueller’s probe by 63-29 percent. Fifty-two percent support it strongly, a high level of strong sentiment.

...In Trump’s dispute with Attorney General Jeff Sessions for allowing the investigation to proceed, the public sides with Sessions, 62-23 percent. Sixty-four percent also oppose the idea of Trump firing Sessions; just 19 percent support it.

Further, while Trump has railed against the Manafort prosecution, Americans call it justified by an overwhelming 67-17 percent, including nearly half of Republicans. The public opposes Trump pardoning Manafort by essentially the same margin, 66-18 percent, with 53 percent strongly opposed. Even among Republicans, 45 percent oppose a Manafort pardon; 36 percent support it.

So why is this so important? At the heart of the matter is the fact that normal Americans don't trust Trump and don't believe anything he says. His claims have always been self-serving bullshit that only his drug-addicted, low IQ and alternative-fact reality show fans can believe. This is important:

Only 5% of Trump's assertions and utterances are true, 16% if you include the stuff that's mostly true. And more and more Americans have come to realize virtually anything he says is likely to be a blatant, self-serving lie. He's an untrustworthy source of information. Normal people may not like the media, but they trust the media more than they trust Trump. Only Republicans trust Trump over the media. Registered voters, asked who they trust more, CNN or Trump, went 53% CNN to 38% Trump. The number was almost identical for the NY Times-- 52% picked The Times to 38% for Trump.

Joe Walsh is a right-wing Chicagoland radio host now. He used to be a right-wing member of Congress. Trump drives him crazy even though they agree on so many issues. In fact, this week he explained to his twitter followers exactly what it is about Trump that drives him crazy:

Yesterday, Ashley Parker at the Washington Post pointed out that "Over roughly the past day, President Trump has decried the 'totally dishonest' media, with its 'fake news' and 'fake books.' He has argued that Google is biased against conservatives. And he has accused NBC News of 'fudging' the tape of an interview with him that has been available online for more than a year. His supporters buy into this crap. Luckily, no one else does.

The president has even declared there is no chaos in his White House, which he claimed is a 'smooth running machine with changing parts,' despite the tumult that emanates almost daily from within its walls.

Trump’s assertions-- all on Twitter, some false, some without clear evidence-- come just over nine weeks before the midterm elections that could help determine his fate, and they are bound by one unifying theme: All of his perceived opponents are peddling false facts and only Trump can be trusted.

Salvatore Rizzo, at the same paper, connected the dots and came to a practical conclusion: GOP campaign ads can't be trusted either. Ryan's SuperPAC is a lie-manufacturing and dispersal machine. It's been "running a series of negative ads about Democratic candidates in close races across the country. The super PAC has raised more than $100 million and, with control of the House up for grabs in November, the group’s wall-to-wall advertising strategy seems to make sense... But the attack ads themselves don’t make much sense… The ads almost unfailingly portrayed Democrats as dangerous and outside the mainstream… For all six ads, we found that the Congressional Leadership Fund took a sliver of accurate information and spun it in a misleading way."

Trump is the Republican Party and the Republican Party is Trump. Yesterday we saw that in Pennsylvania voters are starting to admit to pollsters that as important as the issues are-- healthcare, jobs, etc-- what ties everything together is Trump and that he is now the essential motivating force in the upcoming mid-term elections. That leads to a double-digit preference for congressional Democrats over Republicans. This is what Americans want, not Trump's alternative reality. In southeast Wisconsin, Randy Bryce's campaign manager, David Keith, told us that what he finds most sad and pathetic is that "people are holding out hope for the Republican Party to follow its better history and be a respectable bunch of people. Hell, even MSNBC is trying to convey that hope publicly by allowing folks like Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace to drum up sympathy on TV for the small #NeverTrumper slivver of their party. People are forgetting that this Republican Party-- now commonly referred to as Trump's party-- has been the same party for a as long as I've been alive. How long ago were they an Eisenhower Party? This is still the Lee Atwater/Karl Rove party. It’s just on steroids now. These people have wanted to abandon political correctness for years and they finally have permission."

I asked some of the congressional candidates endorsed by Blue America how all the lies are playing out in their districts.