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Posted on 04/25/2025 4:24:12 AM PDT by karpov
The vibe around President Trump’s second term has shifted, and it’s all his doing.
The president entered office with a bit of a wind at his back. His polling was better than the first time around, protesters weren’t in the streets, and federal investigators weren’t after him. The GOP was more united than in 2016 and business leaders wanted to work with him, while the culture was generally heading in an anti-woke direction.
Now, though, his polling is in a marked decline. His job approval rating is sliding. Depending on what poll you believe, it’s down to 44 percent (Fox News), 40 percent (Pew Research), or 42 percent (Reuters). According to RealClearPolitics, his average approval rating was about 50 percent when he took office and is 46 percent now.
It’s not hard to discern the root of the discontent. In the Fox News poll, just 38 percent approve of Trump on the economy. On tariffs and inflation, the numbers are almost 2–1 against him; 33 percent approve and 59 percent disapprove on inflation, while it’s 33–58 on tariffs.
Pew Research found 45 percent were confident in his ability to handle the economy, down from 59 percent after his election, and lower than in his first term in 2019 and 2020.
Via his snap imposition of sweeping tariffs, Trump in short order took a traditional strength that could see him through any controversy, or counterbalance any vulnerability, and at least vitiated it and perhaps made it a weakness.
It’s hard to think of another example of a president changing the momentum of his administration from positive to negative so quickly and decisively. Trump did it literally in a matter of days.
Usually, presidencies are rocked by events — a hostage crisis, a war gone wrong, uncontrolled inflation. Here, nothing was done to Trump; he did it to himself. He was the event.
This wasn’t him getting denied, either by more cautious advisers or a recalcitrant Congress. He hasn’t been sabotaged by the Deep State. No, he got exactly what he wanted, with a couple of strokes of his pen.
The problem is that Trump didn’t run in 2024 on economic dislocation, business uncertainty, higher prices, or pain for manufacturers. People didn’t want any of these things and understandably don’t like them.
It’s true that he promised tariffs, although all the potential downsides were ignored or minimized. No one could be certain whether he was truly talking of tariffs on the scale of those he imposed on “liberation day” — shocking and unsustainable — or those of his first term, which were much smaller and less disruptive.
Listening to him during the campaign and his Inaugural Address, you’d have thought the promised Golden Age started on Day One. Instead, his message has shifted to the notion that the sunny uplands are off somewhere in the future, after we work through all the gut-wrenching turmoil. In other words, the Golden Age is coming, but, in the meantime, stock up on toilet paper.
Trump’s other numbers aren’t looking so great, either. The Fox News poll has him at 40 percent approve and 54 percent disapprove on foreign policy. Here, too, he’s been the master of his own fate. Canada, Mexico, and Denmark didn’t pick fights with him; he created them out of nothing. The overpromising on a Ukraine peace deal — and retaking the Panama Canal — can’t be helping, either.
Defenders of Trump’s unorthodox way of doing business will often say that he’s a “disrupter,” meaning it as a compliment. But what he’s been disrupting lately is his own presidency. His splashy tariff announcements, rapid reversals, and sense of mystery about where he’s headed next all have real-world consequences on businesses, consumers, and allied nations, and none of it is redounding to his political benefit.
The good news is that having created this situation of his own volition, he can undo most of it if he reverses field on the tariffs. In the meantime, the vibe has definitely changed.
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His polling numbers reflect the realism that the election is over and the hard work of MAGA has begun.
This is a war and war is painful.
his poll numbers are more or less steady at Rasmussen at around 50% and they do their poll daily.
“Failure to understand the point of tariffs by ignorant Americans will result in the end of America and with it the end of the American dream as we once knew it” L.Star
LOL Poll numbers LOL
Lies and narratives.
Hasn’t worked for the media & the left in quite some time. Won’t work now.
His poll numbers would skyrocket is people started being arrested for crimes...
Who cares about polls, they’ve never been accurate for him (Iowa three days before election showed him 4 points down and he won Iowa by how many) he’s not running for another term (or maybe he is? /s) and he has a short time to get things done that have had 50+ years to settle in place. At this point, we really don’t have a choice. Additionally, check the “Trump was right about…” list that’s been circulating, lately. I like his odds.
Look back to Reagan in 1981 and 1982; Reaganomics appeared not to be working bc the implementation of the tax cuts had been delayed. In 1983, things began to soar and Reagan was reelected with the support of 49 states in 1984. I put no stock in anything that the neocon warmongers write at National Review.
Rich Lowry is a silly girly man. Clueless.
NRO, WSJ and the Wall Street hedge fund speculators are CCP puppets. Trump is doing fine. Democrats are imploding. Stand firm.
...I see no stock in anything unless I see it with my own eyes!! bad habit? maybe... but i’m too friggin old to change now!!
A blunder?? What are you talking about? Did you miss the campaign? He’s doing exactly what he said he was going to do. Trump has consistently said all these countries are ripping off the U.S., and he’s going to do something about it. And he is.
I don’t think it’s ever a blunder for a winning candidate to follow through on their promises. I think it’s winning politics. Falling polls? By who’s account? The same people who have been lying to us for the past 30 years. There was a poll in November. Trump won, hands down. Just stay the course Mr. President. We are with you.
“...you’d have thought the promised Golden Age started on Day One.”
No. Lowery is lying here, since anyone with a room temperature IQ understood that what he was talking about was starting a process, an effort, that requires time to implement, such as restoring American manufacturing, just to give one example.
Lowery has a little better than a room temperature, so he is in fact lying.
And Trump’s poll numbers are not falling.
Well, most any thinking person can see that his ideas are working at least to some extent, and the ideas from the Democrats...well, they generally don’t have anything that could be called useful.
Well, most any thinking person can see that his ideas are working at least to some extent, and the ideas from the Democrats...well, they generally don’t have anything that could be called useful.
Bump
Clown
Magical thinking, Mr Lowry
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