Readers React: The real question about Trump’s unpopularity: How are his poll numbers so high?

To the editor: It’s no mystery why the president’s poll numbers have never reached 50%. As columnist Jonah Goldberg intimates, Trump conducts himself in a manner far less presidential than that of any of his predecessors.

The real question concerns how Trump, despite his inept, chaotic governance, manages to poll as high as he does.

The answer lies in how craftily he has cobbled together an unholy alliance of manipulable evangelicals, die-hard conservatives and greedy plutocrats that reliably sides with his mismanagement of our country.

That such a deeply flawed president has achieved any measure of political success augurs ill for preservation of our democracy.

P. Jane Weil, Sacramento

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To the editor: Goldberg is correct when he says Trump’s lousy poll numbers are his own fault, but he is way off base saying the only thing about the report by former Justice Department special counsel Robert S. Mueller III that has hurt him is his reaction to it.

If you bother to read the actual report instead of Atty. Gen. William Barr’s stilted summary, you will see that it contains significant evidence of both misfeasance and malfeasance — enough, in fact, that if it concerned a Democratic president, conservatives such as Goldberg would probably be hollering for impeachment.

Emphasizing only Trump’s reaction to the report is itself a “Trumpian”-style distraction.

Alan Abajian, Alta Loma

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