Donald Trump Makes Things He Hates More Popular

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs has been busily polling the American public, and their latest survey is about international trade. It’s become surprisingly popular ever since the trade-warrior-in-chief started his anti-trade jihad from the White House:

How about that? Trump’s bellowing seems to have had the opposite effect from what he wanted. Suddenly everyone is a fan of trade. Even Republicans. But before we draw any conclusions from this, here’s another chart:

This is not quite so dramatic, but nonetheless it shows that support for higher immigration levels has gone up from 20 percent to 28 percent since 2016. Throughout the entire post-9/11 period, the number of people who want to decrease immigration has plummeted from 58 percent to 29 percent.

So what’s going on? Do things get more popular the more that Trump bashes them? That’s my working hypothesis so far, but more empirical evidence is needed. I’ll get on that later today.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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