Here are my observations and opinions on selected news of the day.

TRUMP’S DAY 500 – President Trump commands the second highest “own party” approval rating (87 percent) of any president at the 500-day mark since World War II, behind only President George W. Bush (96 percent) after 9/11, according to Bruce Mehlman based on Gallup data.

They were followed by George H. W. Bush (86 percent), John F. Kennedy (85 percent), Dwight D. Eisenhower (83 percent), Richard Nixon (83 percent), Barack Obama (79 percent), Ronald Reagan (77 percent), Lyndon B. Johnson (77 percent), Bill Clinton (74 percent), Gerald Ford (59 percent), Jimmy Carter (54 percent), and Harry Truman (48 percent).

Leave it to Jonathan Swan at AXIOS to put a negative spin on this story. While devoting just seven lines to the president’s accomplishments beginning with the fact that he has “wiped out a large portion of Obama’s legacy,” Swan followed with a long list of swipes reflecting negatives under the heading “nothing changed.”

Swan’s statement that in 500 days “Trump’s hijacking of the formerly conservative GOP is complete – an astonishing accomplishment” is meant to be a negative slap,

Swan explains Trump’s accomplishment with the view that the majority party is fully defined by his policies, his popularity with the base, his facts-be-damned mentality, his ability to control and quiet virtually all Republican elected officials.

There are those of us who tired of the establishment members who talked, but didn’t walk, conservatism. Some may not consider Trump a true Republican, or even conservative, but I for one will take Trump’s design on the majority. A majority that keeps it promises.

Swan concluded his 500-day report with the reminder that Trump has 962 days left in his first term. I don’t believe he’s looking forward with my optimism.

MSNBC SOLIDIFIES BIAS ROLE – The network’s hiring of President Obama’s national security advisor Ben Rhodes as a political contributor shouldn’t have surprised anyone. An outspoken critic of President Trump, he joins former Obama spokesman Josh Earnest at the left-leaning network.

In previous posts I have written about the inexplicable rise of Rhodes from college degree work as a creative writer to Obama’s closest national security advisor. Washington foreign policy experts were said to be skeptical of his role.

I also wrote of his creation of what has become known as an “echo chamber” to help “sell” the Iran deal.

He relied on the inexperience and credulity of the Washington press corps, who he later essentially described as twenty-something know-nothings. These highly impressionable journalists valued the access they had to Rhodes and Obama and became willing tools of the echo chamber in which Rhodes used these naïve reporters to report positive information on the Iran negotiations.

Interestingly, excerpts from Rhodes’ soon to be released memoir and the circulation of a speechless Rhodes in behind-the-scenes footage following Donald Trump’s presidential win in 2016, surfaced on the day of MSNBC’s hiring announcement. Click here to see the speechless Rhodes clip.

IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION isn’t expected this year, according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and it is quite understandable because there’s simply no bipartisan agreement. The president wants border security, including funding for a “wall;” he wants to end chain-migration and the visa lottery program; he would like to see the legal immigration program reformed; and he would like to see the DACA situation and sanctuary city funding issue resolved.

While the Republic claims that the president “sees it has a winning strategy for the Republican party to exploit – rather than fix – our nation’s broken immigration system,“ there’s really no clear delineation of Republican and Democrat positions on these issues.

Yet, the editorial board of the left-leaning Arizona Republic tells its readers to “demand some real leadership” in its Sunday opinion piece, “End toxic immigration war? It’s up to you.”

After taking the obligatory swipes at President Trump’s positions, the board offers that while we are a sovereign nation with a duty to secure our borders, “let’s do it with intelligence. Let’s do it with humanity.” Conveniently ignoring the president’s America first policy, the board suggests, “Let’s do it like America.”

The Republic’s board instructs readers to “stop rewarding politicians who further the immigration wars and demand a détente for the sake of decency and to create a space to find solutions.”

Sounds to me like something from the Obama “talk with no action” playbook.

“MORNING JOE” SCARBOROUGH, a guy who never has a nice thing to say about President Trump, warned Democrats that they might lose in the November midterms despite the president’s unpopularity.

“Unless Democrats find their voice and an alternative to Trump’s bleak agenda, his pathetic shtick might just do the trick this fall,“ Scarborough wrote in a Washington Post op-ed.

While the former Republican accused Republicans of selling their souls for Donald Trump, he had to admit – in his insulting way – that the “blundering billionaire has actually begun to fill his trophy case with victories sure to inspire the conservative base.”

It’s hard to believe the MSNBC host was ever a Republican when he opposes the withdrawal from the Paris Accord, scrapping the Iran deal, undermining ObamaCare, moving the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, opposing federal unions, and promoting sensible immigration policies.

Yet he admits that “the president’s list of accomplishments is scratching the ideological itch that establishment Republicans could never reach.”

YOU CAN COUNT ON four-star Gen. Jack Keane (Ret.) to give it to us straight on the up-coming summit with North Korea. The board member of the Institute for the Study of War and senior military advisor for Fox News Channel noted this week that Kim Jung Un is “a young man” in his 30’s who is “looking at many, many years down the road, and wants his regime to stay in power.”

Looking ahead, Keane says, “we will have to provide him with some kind of guarantor for that as part of our negotiations and concessions.”

Keane believes that the president must seek from North Korea “a full accounting of all nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and their willingness to open up their entire disarming and dismantling process so we have full verification of the entire process.” Keane is not keen on turning over the inspection to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has a spotty record in the middle east.

Further, he says that the president must not allow North Korea “to drag this out over many years.”

              May God bless the United States of America.