Donald Trump has hit a major milestone – he is now underwater – and doesn’t have a positive rating on any issue rating.

Meanwhile Trump – as the grifter in chief – has failed to stop insiders making huge profits by placing bets before a new official policy is announced.

The current Presidential approval rating shows that 37% approve of Trump’s job performance while 60% disapprove.

Elliott Morris in his latest summary of US ratings found that Democrats lead Republicans 49% to 43% among registered voters; Trump’s approval on prices and inflation fell to net minus 39 – the worst single issue rating ever recorded; is underwater on border security (his claim to greatness along with tariffs); 58% say the Iran war is a waste of US dollars and 51% think it will make America less safe; and, 13% of Trump 2024 voters have buyers’ remorse about voting for him.

As for US optimism 52% of voters say the US is doing poorly and that major, disruptive changes are necessary.

Morris’ research shows that Trump is underwater on jobs and the economy, health care, immigration, government funding and crime. A new question on elections and democracy immediately came into fourth place among those rating as important issues.

Meanwhile Trump is clearly the grifter in chief in terms of monetising his Presidency. But now it emerges people in his administration are trading on national secrets.

Paul Krugman (24/3) reports that “over the weekend Donald Trump threatened dire vengeance on Iran unless its government opened the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours – a deadline that would expire Monday evening in Washington.”

But then he backed off – illustrating the truth of the TACO badge. But Krugman asked who might have seen this coming? People or a person bought large quantities of oil futures around 15 minutes before Trump’s announcement and sold large quantities of stock market futures.

Krugman said this sharp and isolated jump in volume “was especially bizarre because there were no major news items – no major publicly available news items – to drive sudden market transactions.”

Krugman said there was a word for this – treason.

The Financial Times estimated that this ploy in a magic minute on a Monday involved about $US580 million dollars.

In a company this insider trading would be a clear crime, Krugman said. He also suggested that in the Trump administration it seemed to fit a pattern with large suspicious moves in prediction market Polymarket just before previous attacks on Iran and Venezuela.

“The story would be baffling, except that there’s an obvious explanation: Somebody close to Trump knew what he was about io do and exploited that inside information to make huge instant profits”, Krugman said.

We can probably rule out the Trump boys – too stupid to make it work – but there has to be someone in the know who pulled it off.

The White House strongly denied any wrongdoing and said that there was zero tolerance for illegal profiteering from insider information calling such allegations ‘baseless’.

There was also some concern about the Trump family investment portfolio buying Netflix bonds while the Warner Bros deal was in play. However, the family said the Trump’s personal investment portfolio is “independently managed” and his family members do not have the ability “to provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold.”

After all, given Trump’s record of bankruptcies – who on earth could send a casino bankrupt after all – it might be a good idea to keep him away from investment decisions.