Ironically, Trump has the Hillary Clinton problem — times a thousand. Americans think he is dishonest. Quinnipiac’s poll, for example, shows voters by a margin of 61 percent to 33 percent say he is not honest. (The numbers worsened from a 58 percent/37 percent split in April.) Trump is now in the peculiar situation where he is not believed even when he wanders in the vicinity of the truth. And his own refusal to admit error requires him to double down on indefensible lies. Say, for example, that there are no White House “tapes.” Trump may refuse to admit he was bluffing, thereby forcing Congress to subpoena records and wage a legal battle over nonexistent tapes. (If there are tapes, Trump likely is in deeper trouble, having related many stories as to what people told him in private — stories that are patently ludicrous.)

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In a situation like the Comey firing, the unpopular, untrustworthy president argues that the popular FBI (52 percent approve/16 percent disapprove in the NBC-WSJ poll) has engaged in some kind of witch hunt and further claims that he has been exonerated. Whom do we think the public believes? Yup: A strong plurality of Americans in the same poll say they think Trump fired Comey to shut down the Russia investigation and also say the firing raised more doubts about Trump. By large margins, other polls show that the public (not to mention Trump’s entire national security team) thinks that Russia did, in fact, meddle in the election. Majorities consider the investigation to be important enough as to justify an independent prosecutor/counsel.

Trump antagonists’ claim that Trump is “getting away” with his habitual dissembling doesn’t really hold up. While Republicans have yet to move away from reflexive partisanship, the public has rather decisively determined that the president is untrustworthy. Maybe that explains why the congressional generic poll is looking increasingly bleak for Republicans.