A poll claims Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is the least popular member of President Trump's Cabinet/DOI
Polling numbers change frequently, but for at least a week Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is viewed as the least popular member of President Trump's Cabinet.
The POLITICO/MORNING CONSULT POLL released Wednesday had Defense Secretary James Mattis as the most popular member, with a 40 percent favorability rating from Americans, while Chief of Staff John Kelly polled 39 percent.
Secretary Zinke was at the bottom, with a 22 percent favorability rating. Thirty-four percent of those polled had no idea who he was.
The Interior secretary started the week by claiming that nearly a third of Interior Department employees (that includes the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and several other bureaus) were disloyal to the Trump administration.
He'll end it in Denver, where he's to make a "major policy address" to the conservative Heritage Foundation concerning President Trump's "energy dominance agenda, focusing specifically on the importance of American energy production and how the federal government can be a better business partner."
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This is but one of the reasons. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2017/09/28/59533ed8-a4b8-1...
The fact he can come out worse than Betsy Davis, Jeff Sessions, and Pruitt is saying something.
Next we can expect Trump to boast of what a great job Zinke is doing.
My bet is that number was closer to 90%. Polls routinely show 30-40% of the population don't even know who the VP is, how are they going to know anything about an Interior Secretary. Not knowing him likely led to many negative votes. Poll such as this are the epitomy of fake news.
That's the best you can do, EC? A half-hearted defense, at best.
No, I agree with EC. It all depends on who is asking the question, and especially how the question is asked. Very few networks and newspapers cover the Interior Secretary on even a monthly basis. Ignorance leads to negative votes.
Recall Jay Leno when he did his Jaywalking segment. Hell, most people at the corner of Hollywood and Vine couldn't even identify President Obama. When Mr. Leno then went on the campus of UCLA--just to prove his point--a political science major didn't even know how many senators we have, and put 15 justices on the Supreme Court.
Donald Trump campaigned at the fourth-grade level for a reason. Asking more of voters is asking too much.
Now, if we want to say that proves OUR point--and the Secretary is a total loss--we will need to ask when was the last time we read a book on what ails the American Character. I'll tell you what ails it here in Washington State: We don't teach what matters anymore, including English and History. A generation from now, all of our voters will be signing their names electronically, since cursive writing is out the door, as well. We want stupid. We teach for stupid, and then pat ourselves on the back for being so informed.
Historians know not to believe any of it. When a competent history is written, all sources come into play. The jury is still out on how all of this will end, but I doubt the Secretary is as bad as the pollsters would have us believe.
tomp2 - You are going to judge him on his travel expenses? I think I will hold my judgement on his management of the resources and his department.
A good post, tomp2. As we agree, too many people, once they get into office, forget what "the budget" means. Then where are the stories reporting as you do how the budget is abused? Here in Seattle, our one newspaper has virtually given up reporting on anything except race, class, gender, and diversity. If the story somehow doesn't fit that mold, we don't hear what is going on in government. Investigative reporting, especially tracking so-called middle management, has virtually disappeared.
And so we get more of the same--even more race, class, gender, and diversity, rather than where our taxes go. Sure, we are "kind" to the homeless, until it becomes necessary to clean out one of their "camps." Imagine what that costs--and who benefits from the contract for the cleanup. But no, we are told that such lines of questioning are "insensitive," and so the question is rarely asked.
You bet. I would question Interior morning, noon, and night about where the money goes. And if the leaders are the ones abusing the budget, I would demand that they resign. But how do I get to know that without "insider" status? That is what journalism used to provide the public rather than grandstanding all day long. A poll is the lazy way out. The stories we need have nothing to do with polls.
You paint a terrific story--and a believable one--of a critical lapse in the Interior Department. I do hope that someone in the press follows up.