CREDIT: GALLUP
It's all downhill from here.

Back at it again with the low approval ratings

In news that would only surprise those who have been living under a rock for the last three months, President Donald Trump’s approval rating has reached a re­cord-breaking low.

Still in his first 100 days as president, Trump’s approval rating has dipped to only 37 per cent approval in a Gallup poll. This is the lowest approval rating at this point in a presidency since 1945, when approval rat­ings were tracked.

Sure, it’s a little satisfying that he has such a low approval rating when being liked by the public seems to be such a high prior­ity for him, and we can joke about Trump’s poor performance all we want, but we can’t forget one important thing: the results of him being a shitty president means that peo­ple will suffer, or possibly even die.

By cutting funding for programs like Meals on Wheels, elders who depend on it and other programs to sustain themselves will suffer. But seriously, how evil do you have to be to cut funding to a program that feeds the elderly. That’s like pushing your grandma to the ground and laughing at her pain. What kind of monster would do that? But I digress.

By dismantling the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), millions of Americans will struggle with paying for healthcare, something that is viewed by many to be a right, not a luxury granted only to those who can afford it. A study of Trump’s new healthcare plan has found that as many as 24 million Americans will not be able to afford healthcare under the new plan. Something that gets forgotten in these discussions are the millions of people who will be barred from accessing the healthcare they need that may just save their lives.

Additionally, with the plans to cut fund­ing to Planned Parenthood because of their connection with abortion (though it has been proven that no government funding to the organization goes to providing abortions) millions of women will no longer be able to access preventative care and treatment that can prevent serious healthcare issues like cancer. Be pro-life all you want, but it’s not very pro-life of you to deny women health­care that may save their lives.

By refusing to allow refugees into the country, Trump is putting them at risk of being killed in their home country, a coun­try they were desperately trying to escape. I cannot imagine the helplessness refugees felt knowing Trump would be the president and that they would be barred from a safe place to raise their families. Thankfully, Canada is just one of the countries stepping in to help desperate refugees

By making uninformed and rash mili­tary decisions, Trump is putting the lives of soldiers who are risking their lives to pro­tect their country at an unnecessary risk. Trump’s first military action was deemed a failure due to a lack of sufficient intelli­gence and led to the deaths of Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens as well as a number of civilians, including an 8-year-old girl.

By claiming former president Barack Obama was spying on him by wiretapping his phone, Trump undermines the funda­mentals of democracy and the idea of a peaceful transfer of power. Though mem­bers of his own government have refuted those claims as false, the fact that the pres­ident so easily lies about things he clearly doesn’t understand begs the questions: how many other things is he lying about?

By calling any news source that criticizes him “fake news”, Trump is discrediting the people whose job it is to keep him in check. So what might happen when journalists are no longer able to do their jobs? Ask Rus­sians, they’ll tell you what it’s like to live under a dictatorship and only receive gov­ernment-approved information.

And Trump wonders why his approval rating is so low. All this, within the first three months; it’s going to be another rough 45 months.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.