Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

Can Trump Capitalize on the Baghdadi Raid?

The president’s penchant for partisanship and self-promotion may preclude a polling bump.

October 28, 2019 at 10:30 AM UTC

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

A missed opportunity.
Photographer: Tasos Katopodis/Getty

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I’ll leave questions about the national-security implications of killing Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to Spencer Ackerman, Thomas Zeitzoff and my Bloomberg Opinion colleague James Stavridis. I’ll stick to summarizing what we know about the likely effect on President Donald Trump’s approval rating.

Short answer: If he does get a bump, it’s likely to be small and brief.