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.
People want everything right now.
They don’t know that even if manufacturers decide to operate here, the design, permit and building would take 24 months. Scores of leftist judges have created a blizzard of legal resistance. Energy will become more available but that requires a build up.
Rich Low ry, National Disgrace, and Karpov are just Trump haters.
Listen to NOTHING they say. Its all leftist propaganda.
Its all they got, hate Trump, attack Trump.
Any deals/concessions Trump makes are strategic. Planned from day one. Is there a TEN D chess. Must be because Trump is playing it.
The Art of the Deal.
Okay. Bashed.
This nation's national debt -- depending on which numbers and from what source one takes them -- is enormous and still rising rapidly. A significant change is not only in order, but coming. The game of politics is becoming less and less pertinent to the coming needs of our national cultural and economic health.
Herb Stein's pithy law applies. Polling numbers don't. Even financial markets. The "blunder" was committed long ago.
"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."
This includes the National Review, whose web page wants login in / sign in to read some political opinion. Since National Review made no endorsement of President Trump during any of the campaigns, it is a player sitting on the sidelines.But, hey, it endorsed Mitt Romney in 2007, so there's that.
Would you rather Trump ignored the decades of other countries tariffs on American made products?
Yes, but the Dems owned the House. The difference is, they did not impeach Reagan.
“You can bash Lowry, National Review, and me,...”
________________________________________________
Yep, we sure can.
Lying liars and the lies they tell. 🙄
Further elaboration:
"For constitutional conservatives, the Republican contest functioned less like a primary and more like an abandonment. Politically orphaned by their party, conservatives were forced to either stay home or hold their noses and vote for a progressive Republican."Conservatives against Trump National Review, 15 February 2016, article by Glenn Beck.
If one accepts the notion that some "Republicans" are so easily become open Democrat allies -- Liz Cheney campaigning with Kamala Harris is become iconic -- and thereby sees there is some form of "uni-party" which serves itself through legal as well as illegal forms of corruption, then this is no "two-party" system, but quite a multiparty game. Generally insiders arrayed against outsiders.
Between the mRNA jabs hoax, the Biden years, and the Ukraine debacle spilling over as so many try to make "Biden's war" into President Trump's war, the picture of politics as seen from Beck's statement above screams aloud.
"Politically orphaned by their party, conservatives were forced to...."Really? But we recall the WaPo assertion that Obama was a conservative:
"For constitutional conservatives, the Republican contest functioned less like a primary and more like an abandonment. Politically orphaned by their party, conservatives were forced to either stay home or hold their noses and vote for a progressive Republican."So many "conservatives," we are told. Yup.Barack Obama, conservative Washington Post, 22 November 2019
Quite dumping NR Dung on this site.
This nation’s national debt — depending on which numbers and from what source one takes them — is enormous and still rising rapidly.
And not a penny has been put towards the debt from the massive cuts from DOGE. If the populous could see a positive direction in the debt, they’d support this.
Also we’ve been hearing about the mean debt since reagan busted the budget and added to the debt. We’re still here.
Indeed, we're still here. And as the interest on the debt becomes one of the largest line items crowding out other goals, "we're still here" includes "here and paying, paying a lot, paying more than a lot." Yesterday is VERY expensive, when interest charges are tallied today. Tomorrow the word will be MORE. And we'll still be here, indebted and here.
Lowry is always wrong.
L
You wusses. Hold steady, globalist cowards.
Yes, but he didn't have to be a boneheaded idiot about it. I don't need to be a WWII scholar to understand that you don't pick a fight with the entire planet all at once, and with zero prep time. Had he started with the measures and moves that brought the lower prices ASAP, he would have more popular support at home. Then had he started with the low hanging fruit on the tariffs and trade wars, he could've added to the momentum, while adding quite a few positive PR stories. The entire world knows that the finale will be the US v China championship round. There was no reason to push it to the front, before he had momentum, and before he had the strengthened economy to make an even better run at it.
He could have spent the first YEAR getting fair deals every week from multiple smaller nations, and building coalitions while doing so... and even targeting the proxies like Vietnam that China uses to maximize their unfair trade advantages. Pres Trump could've added feel-good stories like... off the top of my head, let's say Haiti... in exchange for fast-tracking the fairer trade deal, Trump gives Haiti assistance in building one or two modern new hospitals and the financing for them to pay locals who got educated in the US, but who cannot return home because they could never make the same amount of money. Just $4m/yr for a decade... just $40m... would be enough for 10-20 US-educated Haitian doctors and surgeons to return home and staff that hospital and truly change things for the betterment of all Haiti (where the thieving Clintons are absolutely reviled for stealing $3bn after their huge earthquake).
Imagine a YEAR filled with constant feel-good stories that keep more and more moderates moving to the Right, while the extremist Left continues to drive away their own voters. Take that time to strengthen the dollar and keep inflation low, and get the Fed to cut rates, and let the DJIA grow, and get rid of millions of illegals (which instantly drives down demand and prices for housing and healthcare and food and energy and gas and emergency services and more)... After 100+ smaller nations and reliable allies have already found out that the process for the fairer tariffs isn't a terrible thing, and can often end up with extra goodies and handouts and cooperations, THEN see where China stands, and how far they are willing to take it.
You can NOT fight every battle, at the same time, without any buildup, and without drumming up domestic support for the war first.
Trump acted hastily and stupidly in this case, and it isn't difficult to see, even for folks who just play online war-games.
National Review needs to STFU. What a waste of Buckley’s gift to conservatism it has become.
You’re assuming Trump’s strategy should mirror traditional coalition-building or incremental diplomacy. But that’s not how Trump fights. His approach is blitzkrieg—fast, focused, overwhelming. You hit hard before the Democrats, the Deep State, the bureaucracy, and global opponents have time to organize resistance.
The goal isn’t to please the press or rack up feel-good stories for moderates. It’s to shake the nation and global economic system out of their inertia and expose who’s been taking advantage of the U.S.—China most of all. That requires a high-impact, high-velocity campaign, not soft overtures.
Yes, a slower, more polite rollout might have looked cleaner. But Trump isn’t trying to make friends—he’s trying to win. And that takes shock and awe, not sugar. He doesn’t want a drawn-out negotiation over 200 minor trade agreements. He wants to change how the entire world views U.S. leverage—immediately.
He chose blitzkrieg over trench warfare. You can call it reckless. But it might be the only way to break entrenched systems that count on American hesitation and weakness.
National Review’s approval rating has been cut in half, dropping to 1%.
Even the Germans, who invented the blitzkrieg, before the world knew it was even possible, built up their base first. They took what they could without bullets. Then they raced across Poland WHILE MAKING FAKE PEACE DEALS with Russia. THEN they turned west, grabbing all of the low-lying fruit that they could, before the Final Round, Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia.
It is irrelevant if that is "Trump's style", it is moronic and foolish and brings more problems than it solves. He should have learned from history. Of course I hope that he is successful, but he could have increased his odds, and his base of support, for an entire year, while blitzing the Left on everything else, and keeping the media running in circles while we did our best to get all of the good news stories out there and stealing millions more Moderate votes from the Left for a year.
That's your opinion. And I believe it's dead wrong.
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