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Is the Trump Spell Finally Breaking? Crashing Polls Could Show Crack in His Support.
00:19:00
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- [00:00]
Andrew Eggert
Hi, this is Andrew Eggert with the Bulwark. Donald Trump's been up to a lot of stuff recently. The public's starting to notice. Wouldn't you know it, they're not super happy about it. We had a bunch of new polls in over the weekend that have Trump's approval rating hovering right around 40%, which is as low as, as it's been so far in this term, flirting with where he's been at relatively disastrous points in his first term. Here to talk about it, Sarah Longwell, Lauren Egan. Hey, guys, how you doing?
- [00:24]
Lauren Egan
Hey, Andrew.
- [00:25]
Sarah Longwell
Hey, Andrew. Way to go on morning shots.
- [00:28]
Andrew Eggert
Sarah, let's start with you here. Where are we at? I mean, like, we've been, we've been clanging the alarm bells on all this stuff for a long time. Obviously, polling is a partial indicator. It's a snapshot in time, it's a lagging indicator. But it really does seem as though these things are starting to add up to, to a pretty frosty picture for the president just about 100 days in.
- [00:48]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. So a few things. Number one, when I was on with your buddy Bill Kristol a few weeks back, we were talking about, like, what does Trump need to get to in. In order to have Republicans start to be like, ugh, we cannot give this guy everything that he wants. And I'll tell you, Donald Trump's strength, like, I think one of the reasons you didn't see as much pushback in early days is because he won the popular vote. Like, that sense of a popular mandate. Now, they way overstate their mandate, but even that sense of a popular mandate, it had Democrats way on their heels doing a lot of soul searching. Right. It gave Trump, like, nobody balked. I mean, they balked maybe a little bit, but, like, he got all of his insane picks for the Cabinet, like Cash Patel, because people are like, well, I don't know. They voted for this guy. They voted for. He was doing. And then he started fast and furious, hammering away at things, and nobody stopped him because they were like, I don't know, I guess people like it. They seem to have wanted it. They voted for him. So the meaning of the dive in the polls is that Americans are not happy with the direction that Donald Trump is taking us. All of his move fast, break things stuff, whether it is Doge, whether it's his immigration policies, with the exception of securing the border broadly, but like the. All the rest of it, the deportations, people still, they care about the economy. This is where with jbl not on. I would like to Give you a Sarah's always right pitch, which is he was like, but the economy's great and everybody's fine. I was like, no, there were a lot of people super price sensitive, cared about their grocery bill, thought it was too high. Inflation was still wrecking them. People at the lower income levels. Many of the people who like Donald Trump culturally and so they voted for him thinking he was a businessman. This is the central conceit of Donald Trump. He's going to lower prices. For me. When they see prices not coming down and him not seeming to be paying a lot of attention to getting prices down, like people are like, wait, what's happening? I hear this in the focus groups all the time. People who say things are just getting worse with the economy and they were already bad for me. And so people are feeling not good on basically every front across all vectors. And it matters because at some point it matters for democracy. To me, you, Donald Trump being a failure is good for people saying this is a failed experiment. Having an autocrat is no good for America. It does not lead to better individual outcomes. And frankly, I think that is a good thing.
- [03:12]
Andrew Eggert
Yeah, that's, that's such an interesting point. I had not really thought about it in those terms before. I think a lot of people who saw the outcome of the 2024 election just got really black pilled about the whole, the whole concept that you could talk to people about norms or democracy or institutions at all. But, but I think that, that, that that's absolutely right. That the worst things get for people in the, on the kitchen table issues, the more incompetent and just sort of destructive he looks on, on all the stuff that they did vote on that they do care about. The more it kind of opens the door to talk about all the other stuff. Let me, let me just get a little bit into the nitty gritty of a couple of these polls because I didn't do that off the top. And these are really kind of striking findings. Bill, Bill, Bill Crystal, our, our buddy that you mentioned, he wrote this up in, in morning shots this morning. I'll just go through three of them that came out this weekend. CNN in the field, April 17 to 24, Trump had, Trump has Trump with a 40, 41% job approval rating, 59% disapproval. That's down 7% in the last two months. And this is also interesting. 22% of respondents strongly approve of his performance. 45% strongly disapprove. ABC News, Washington Post Ipsos survey Trump 39% approval with only 21% strong approval, 55% disapproval, 44% strongly disapproved. So again, 44, 45% that the New York Times poll also has 45% strong disapproval, 28% strong approval. And I think that's, that's kind of shocking to me because I mean, I think that it's just sort of been a bedrock of how we analyze Donald Trump forever, that he's like, he's got his 35%, that's his core base, right, who are just kind of ride or die for him, come what may, hell or high water. And obviously, you know, I'm sure that a lot of those people are still pulling the partially approve or moderately approved for these polls, but it really does show the extent to which he's, he's on the back foot here. I mean, Lauren, Lauren, what do you make of, of just kind of the, that, that element, I mean, like, are we seeing a real softening among, among Trump supporters here or is there something else that, that accounts for that?
- [05:08]
Lauren Egan
Yeah, I mean, I think what Sarah said is such an important point about the democracy component of this and sort of rejecting Trump's authoritarian instincts. I think this is a real sort of rejection from voters of some of like the excesses of, of Trumpism. And I think an important point, like to your question, this could just be the start of it. We, you know, this is for the New York Times poll. This is the first poll that they've done since the election to this scale. So we need to wait and see. But I think what's really important here is that this could get a lot worse. Trump has, you know, not exact exactly exhibited a lot of self control in the past. So will he reign in some of what he's doing on immigration? I don't know. Probably, probably not. Same with the trade war. If that just continues to get worse, this could just be, you know, sort of, this could be the best it gets for him for, for quite some time. And remember, he, he is a lame duck. So I think what is going to be interesting to see over the coming weeks and months is how do Republicans and Congressional Republicans start to respond to this? They all have to run for reelection in a year from now and do they start to sort of, you know, say this rallying behind Trump is coming at too much of a cost, that I think, you know, we'll have to wait and see sort of how things play out over the coming months and, and whether the polls hold, as, you know, New York Times and the Post continue to do more of these. But again, I think we have to remember he's a lame duck. Congressional Republicans have to, you know, go run for reelection pretty soon.
- [06:41]
Andrew Eggert
Yeah, yeah. They have to win their primaries first. That, that's going to be one of those things. I mean, there, there'll be people who are going to be willing to call their shot and say, you know, I think this is the moment that Congressional Republicans are really finally going up. I'm not going to be that guy. I'm going to wait and see. I mean I, I will be shocked the first time it happens no matter what. Just given the, given the track record, given how, how like, I mean that's the one thing that they, they are still so good at even amid all this cratering stuff, is they still have that stranglehold on like right wing chains of communication. Everything is always somebody else's fault. It's the judge's fault that the immigration's going badly. It's other countries who are taking advantage of U.S. fault that, you know, the trade war is going poorly or it's, it's Howard Letnick or it's Scott Bessant. You know, like there's, there's always all these excuses. So I will be interested to see.
- [07:21]
Lauren Egan
How that point, if it's not, you know, like totally agree with you on Congressional Republicans, but then it's like the universities, the law firms. Does this kind of make it a bit easier for them to be like, oh yeah, like this, this guy is out of office in three and a half years from now.
- [07:34]
Andrew Eggert
The Supreme Court. Yeah.
- [07:36]
Lauren Egan
So, so like what are we doing here if these numbers continue to tank? Like what, what's the cost benefit of us sort of caving to him? That calculation starts to dramatically change. So we'll have to see what happens.
- [07:50]
Andrew Eggert
Yeah, yeah. The one other thing you mentioned earlier, Sarah, that I just wanted to re underscore is how all the things are falling, all these numbers are falling in tandem. I mean, I think when the, when the trade war first started, really tanking the stock market, there was a scramble. There's a lot of reporting saying that there was a scramble in the White House to basically change the subject to anything else in that, in that moment, like let's get this, let's get the news cycle off these crashing markets. A lot easier said than done. But all the things they're trying to pivot to, the immigration enforcement, you know, the fights with the courts, all that stuff, none of these are like safe landing spaces for them. It starts to look like now here's.
- [08:24]
Sarah Longwell
The thing about the economy Right. And this is. I went nuts about this for a while when I was listening to Democrats being, like, talking about Albergo Garcia is a distraction. We shouldn't do it while the economy is tanking. And I was like, can you guys not do two messages at once, number one? Number two, the thing about the economy is the economy is a lived experience. Right? The economy has negative personal consequences on individuals. And so right now, what you are starting to see is amid all the chaos of Trump's tariffs on, tariffs off, you know, stocks go up, stocks go down, are we firing the Fed chair, whatever. Midst all that chaos are a bunch of people who own small businesses, who have investment accounts, who have real reasons why, who would participate in the supply chain in some way, who are watching what's happening. And you're starting to hear these stories get told. The New York Times or, I'm sorry, the Wall Street Journal has a bunch today from some people who are Trump voters. And I hear these in focus groups who are people saying, I was a Trump voter and now my business is literally being decimated. And as. Even though some of the tariffs are off, people don't realize many of the tariffs are still on, still new, still impacting business. The uncertainty is wildly affecting not just the markets, but the business. Anybody who owns a small business or participates in a small business, who's employed by a small business like this has been bad for Main Street. People are feeling it. And the thing that Democrats need to understand is that Donald Trump is literally doing three quarters of your job for you by wrecking the economy and filling it with uncertainty. And so they're going to have the lived experience of the economy, which is driving his economic numbers down. And so if you can say not only is he crashing the economy, but he's ignoring the Supreme Court, he is illegally deporting people. And this is what has happened. Some people went on offense on Alberto Garcia. And so that excess pointing to that, those things fuse together to lead to a general perception for people. This is when we talk about vibes, right? We talk about. It's the idea that the cumulative effect of these things overall lead to people being like, dude doesn't know what he's doing. He's not doing a good job. I don't feel good about the direction of the company. I don't understand the ins and outs or the particulars of this. And look, I listened to these voters. I just did an episode with Ann Applebaum where we were really asking voters about sort of the authoritarianism and the deportations and Trump voters were basically like, I don't know, he's an MS.13 criminal, like get him out of here. And so like look, he's still going to have. But there's enough people who are saying is this okay? This doesn't feel okay. And there. And like there's a couple people in the groups who say he's ignoring the Supreme Court, he should not do that. And you know, so that overall is going to lead to Donald Trump. The numbers go down and the more the numbers go down. This is. Lauren just made this point and is extremely important. I don't care how big a lame duck he is. The point is, is when he losing that mandate, losing the perception that the American people are squarely behind him and the things he wants to do makes it, makes it a, easier for people to stand up. Right. Because they're less afraid of him because he has less. Because it's not Trump, it's not just Trump they're afraid of. They're, they're afraid of the fervent devotion of his followers and the fact that they are going to dominate politics and elections. That Donald Trump can wield them however he wants. And if that is diminished, he becomes much less potent political figure and the fear becomes less potent and you can really push back. And this is why people need to go on offense and not be afraid. And look, he individually going after people, can he still do real damage to people? Yes. Does he still going to try to threaten 60 Minutes in CBS over the Paramount deal? Probably. But that leverage goes down as people stand up to him. And this, him doing a crappy job, like just not doing a good job as the manager of the country goes a long way to reducing that mandate. And that's why it's important. That's why these, it's not just like, ooh, let's all look at polls. No, this is a barometer of public support and the public is no longer support. Look at this. This I've got the ABC poll had the economy at 61% disapprove that.
- [12:32]
Andrew Eggert
On an issue of major strength for him four months ago, five months ago.
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Sarah Longwell
That's just the central mythology of Trump. He's a good businessman. You take that away from him, it starts to make a big difference in voters minds.
- [12:45]
Andrew Eggert
You could, you could almost look at it like perhaps the most important confrontation over the next three years is Donald Trump versus John Roberts. Right. Chief justice of the Supreme Court. I would way rather live in a world where Donald Trump is the one who's having to look over his shoulder and triage political support and triangulate for, for dropping polls rather than John Roberts being the one who's like, gosh, this guy's got this giant mandate. How am I going to, how am I going to prop up the institutional credibility of my institution? Is it going to be important for me to cave on some of this stuff? We'll see how all that goes. Lauren, I wanted to ask you as well. Obviously, all these polls are primarily about Donald Trump. That's the headlines, what we've been talking about all this time. Uh, Sarah, you mentioned, you know, the Democratic response to some of this. And it's not as though it's an uncomplicated like, like super cheery picture for Democrats either in some of these. Can you talk about, I forget, was it the, the Washington Post poll that, that did some of some questions about the Democrats as well?
- [13:37]
Lauren Egan
Yeah, yeah, I think they're in all three of these polls. There's, you know, some mixed news for Democrats, obviously, to your point, good news for them that, that Trump support is softening. That's something they're obviously going to celebrate. But yeah, the Post poll had, you know, I think 7 in 10 say that the Democratic Party is out of touch and 6 and 10 say the same about Trump. That's obviously been this huge challenge for the Democratic Party as they're trying to sort of figure out how they're not just the party of the elites and the overly educated. They haven't found an answer to that. And then some more positive news in the Times poll on the generic ballot. So that's just a, you know, generic Democrat versus Republican. Democrats do about three points better. My takeaway from that is that Democrats, you know, still have a lot of work to do. I think that there are some Democrats who say, who are looking with a lot of hope towards the midterms, who think that they, they really, you know, will win back the House. That might be true, but these polls really, I think, show that they still have to fine tune their message on some of these things. Sarah was talking about Democrats sort of like bickering about whether or not they should talk about, you know, the deportations. And there was this huge fight that played out in the Democratic Party all last week about like, oh, do we talk about tariffs or do we talk about the deportations? And just kind of, you know, going back and forth about how to spend their time. And I think what they learned from that is if you, you go and you talk about the deportations and you tell Americans why they should care about it and why this is bad. You have a role to play in shaping public opinion. And this has kind of been the, the, one of the fights that have played out in the Democratic Party really, since the beginning of the Trump administration. It's what role do you have to play in shaping public opinion? Do you just let Trump kind of like, drown himself, or do you get out there and try and sort of drag those numbers down as much as you can? So I think we'll kind of see, see, folks start to talk about all of these issues a bit more and realize that you can do a bunch of things at once, even if the fundamental main message you're going to try and get across is the economy. At the end of the day, all of these things play a piece. Play a piece. And yeah, I think this, this poll for them shows that, you know, good news, but also they, they have a, they have work to do.
- [16:01]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah.
- [16:01]
Andrew Eggert
Sarah, let me get one more vibe check from you on that. Just because when, when, when you're looking at Democrats are out of touch, right? I mean, that could mean two things, right? There could be people responding to that who are like, the Democrats are out of touch, because I don't like all the woke stuff. But then there's also this whole other tranche of, like, probably pretty strongly progressive voters who are like, the Democrats are out of touch because the world is burning down. And I don't see them really, like, responding sufficiently to that. I mean, like, how do you parse out where voters are on this stuff?
- [16:27]
Sarah Longwell
So when Lauren and I did our focus group pod episode together, and we were talking about the Democrats, right? We did two groups. We did a bunch of groups of Democrats who thought the party needed to be more progressive. And then we did a bunch of groups of people who thought the Democratic Party needed to be more moderate. So all Democrats both had different visions of where the party should go to be more effective. And yet Lauren and I can both tell you, listening to those groups, they mostly, it wasn't about moderate or progressive. It was about being aggressive, right? They wanted to see their leaders, their Democratic leaders. And look, if you're more moderate, that's basically meant you wanted to see, like, the Cory Bookers of the world doing it. And if you're more progressive, you wanted to see AOC doing it. But, like, everybody wanted to see their Democratic leaders going out there and fighting back and saying, like, why this was wrong. And so their frustration with Democrats, I think, shows up in those low numbers. I don't think it's Just because of the woke stuff. I think when you see approval ratings for Democrats down In like the 20s, it is a, there's a, a collective yawp coming from like the guts of the Democratic Party saying, go do something. Would you say something? My God. I mean, Cory Booker's performative 25 hours on his feet. People loved that. Not because they thought it made a huge difference, because it like expressed in some physical way the thing that they're desperate to see happen. And so I think you could see those Democrat. Democrats have got to stop thinking about, roll over and play dead and let Trump do it himself and like, go on offense and be aggressive as like, that's a false choice. Let Trump is doing a bunch of bad things. Tell people it's Trump's fault. Like the idea that you don't in this new communications environment, have to be a constant presence in helping to shape public opinion and tell stories to people and help them understand what's happening is, is, is a fundamental problem for Democrats is that they don't know how to just do this as a relentless machine the way that Republicans do. And so stop getting caught up in like the, Do I do this or do it? Just go everything everywhere all at once. Bad movie, Good communication strategy.
- [18:38]
Andrew Eggert
I liked that movie, but we don't have to fight about it. We can leave it there.
- [18:41]
Sarah Longwell
Stupid.
- [18:43]
Andrew Eggert
I see it, saw it three or four times. Really good movie. Go watch it. Don't watch it. I don't care. Leave it there. Thank you all for watching. Thanks for tuning in. Hope you all subscribe to the channel. Go over to the bulwark.com, read my newsletter, read Lauren's newsletter, listen to all Sarah's podcast, watch her focus groups. Lots of good stuff. Thanks for watching. We'll see you all next time.