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Tyler Redick
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JVL
Hello everyone, this is JVL here with my best friend Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark and Lordy. We got a poll. Shock poll, as they say, from UMass. Donald Trump approval rating March 202633 approve 62 disapprove negative net carry the 29. Holy Megyn Kelly. Five alarm fire. Sarah, this is, I mean, I'll let you say the catchphrase.
Sarah Longwell
We are one point away. One point away from Bush line from what? It's coming.
JVL
There it is. You know, there it is.
Sarah Longwell
I was on spring break last week when all of the polling came out. Okay, everybody had a poll last week. CBS had a poll like every. Fox News had a poll. Trump tanking in all of them. This is one of the most negative ones from UMass Amherst. But I think also it's coming out just a little later than some of those other ones, right? So I do think we are going to see a tail as the, as Iran continues, as gas prices stay high, get higher, as inflation, we get like increasing news about the economy, inflation state, you know, like all of that stuff. I couldn't believe I wasn't here last week to talk about it. It made me so upset that I was missing it. But I was watching it saying, well, we're not at the Bush line yet, so I don't have to be on the pods. But this new, this new poll, look, one poll is one poll. These are good pollsters though. They, they are tracking against themselves Where I think they were, he was at 44%. Do the numbers right in front of you.
JVL
44%. So in April 2025, 44, 51. In July of 2025, 3856. And now 3362. Last week, Quinnipiac had him at 38 approve, 56 disapprove. So not, not a lot better. Not a lot better right now. This is, I mean, can we go through some of the cross tabs?
Sarah Longwell
Yeah.
JVL
On attacking Iran is putting America first. 27% net agree. Yikes. Attacking Iran will increase oil prices. 79% net agree. I mean, it's bad, it's bad. The United States should send ground troops into Iran. 8%. And the good news is I don't think we're going to send ground troops in. I think the this morning's truth social tweet in which he said there's a brand new regime in Iran and they're so much smarter and wiser and more friendly to America. That is condition setting. And so he's claiming that we've achieved regime change. And then he said, you know, so long as they open the strait. So he only put one condition on it. We just have to return to the pre war status quo. That strikes me as a guy who's really looking to declare victory.
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. Although the Dow is up today because they think that I guess the Fed is not going to raise rates. But I was waiting to see what the market did after it. It seemed interesting to me that this tweet came just a couple hours before markets were to open after a really bad Friday, after four weeks of losses. I do think Trump, Trump's. I have really quickly. We have not talked about this tweet and that wasn't even what we were supposed to talk about. But I just want to say at the open, the fact that we are conducting our foreign policy by 7am Rambling bleats from our president in a normal world, in a world that existed 10 years ago, just what he did today alone, the way he is conducting foreign policy by tweet would be disqualified. It would be unthinkable. So I just, sometimes I think we're so inured to how this stuff is getting done. But his tweet today said we're very close to reaching a deal. We have this new regime that we're talking to. No evidence of that. We've seen. No. You do have to wait for like the Iranians to confirm it to know whether or not what our own government is saying is True, but like then he says, and if they don't, we're blowing up all like once again he started a clock on us, blowing up
JVL
their entire energy infrastructure and deceleration, desalinization. And so these things are war crimes. And like we can talk, we have like a slightly larger conversation about that if you want. But again the, the President of the United States is saying, oh and by the way, if we don't get, we want to do here, we're going to do war criming.
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, that's right. No it like on so many levels
JVL
this morning they Yes, 10 years ago, Barack Obama, Barack Obama does that. He's impeached by 4 o'clock in the afternoon.
Sarah Longwell
Can you imagine any other president just with these all caps, all hours making saber rattling and saying we have a deal. Like there was both market manipulation contained therein as well as war crimes as well as threats of escalation. Like it's all bananas. It doesn't surprise me, nor should it surprise anybody that he is declining in popularity. And jbl, I want to ask you back because sometimes I think people feel a sense of there's nothing and I think it's fair for some people to say 33%, 38% that just, that still feels too high for what we're living in. But considering the level of polarization that we've lived through, considering how durable even his outer layer of support has been, not even like the base, base America first MAGA types, but that kind of outer layer. Do you feel like you're seeing movement? Like you're a kind of see nothing matters, no one will abandon him type of. What do you think? Does it make you feel like there's actually movement from people?
JVL
I mean there's clear movement and there has been clear. I mean you just track from January 2025 through today and there has been absolutely observable, undeniable movement downward. I get caught in the a little bit like hey, it isn't enough. This needs to be better. And when we talk about, you know, in the age of polarization we live in, to me that is like saying, well you have to understand that we're drowning. So of course we can't get enough oxygen. Like that age of polarization has to break and if it can't break, then we're screwed. You know, like I, you know, like at some point, if you can't get down to 32, 30% when all of the outcomes are so terrible. Here's an interesting cross tab from this is approval of women sitting at 29% by education, high school degree or less. This is the UMass Amherst poll, down from 42% in July to 33% now again, you don't have to believe that it's actually a 33%, but it is moving downward. Yes, and they had his approval by African Americans sitting at 8% single digit.
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, his, his polling has been, has been dismal. In fact, he's starting to be underwater with white men. Like, white men are like the one thing this guy can usually count on, but his numbers on the economy, on inflation, on affordability are a disaster. And I don't know if you saw this today, but Axios reported that the GOP was weighing health care moves to pay for the Iran war. Right. And so they're basically taking the one issue that Democrats are more popular than Republicans on very reliably health care and saying we're going to raid that to pay for this deeply unpopular war, which, by the way, Donald Trump promised he was going to be the peace president. Do you see? Because as, as I was on break, I was watching the news thinking, boy, this really is getting away from him. Like the, the Iran thing is, they are, he is not, does not seem to have found an off ramp. When he tweeted that this morning, I was like, what is his actual off ramp? Or is this just market manipulation? What is, what did you think when
JVL
you saw that his off ramp is offering them enough that it becomes worth their while to let him off the hook. And I am confident that he can do that. Like, I am confident that there, there is enough, enough sugar for him to give them, starting with the ending of sanctions and then going through some other things. Right. He can, he can issue some meaningless security guarantees, they can issue some meaningless promises not to develop nuclear weapons that both sides can, can go back on. But the big thing is the sanctions. And the sanctions are already lifted right now. And so he doesn't even, he can even say it's no change, which would be true. Right. He's, he's not going to put the sanctions back in place. And so then that allows the Iranians to exit this just again, just objectively in a stronger position for the long haul than they were. I think he has some coalition management to, to do. He'll have to really figure out how to finesse the Israelis and the Saudis who are going to be not super happy with this. But he's got to get out and he's got to give Iran whatever Iran wants in order to let him get out. And by letting him get out, I mean, to agree to, just once he's gone, reopen the straight. And I think they're likely to do that. I mean, they've been pretty cagey and pretty sophisticated throughout this war. They hit, hit a bunch of, hit an awacs, I think, and hit a bunch of refuelers on the tarmac. So, I mean, again, their intel has been pretty good and their sophistication in hiding drones and their expenditure of munitions rate there it has been again, like they didn't just shoot their wad right off the bat, the first one. This has been a deep humiliation for America. And in a weird way, I mean, I. The sooner Trump pulls the plug, the better. Like it won't be.
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, that's right.
JVL
For America. I mean, for him also, but for America. And I mean, look, he's getting ready to invade Cuba anyway. So, you know, so he does Cuba in two weeks and then, you know, all is forgotten. And it's all forgotten.
Sarah Longwell
Is all forgotten, though, because it, everything that I've seen shows that the, the supply chain disruption that has happened is already. Because this is the one thing I'll say, and I probably should have said this on front because it's the main piece of analysis I think that, that we should really focus on, which is personal consequences for people right now are that Trump has not lowered any of their costs. Things are getting more expensive, gas is more expensive, products are going to be more expensive. And that, that is the thing. That is the thing that voters are going to hold Trump accountable for. And his numbers are likely going to keep going down even if he gets out of this war.
JVL
Well, things won't be better before the midterms.
Sarah Longwell
That's right. Yeah. Is, is kind of the. He has, he has put himself in a, in a position now where he's got to get out as fast as he can. And even then it won't be enough for a period of time.
JVL
Yeah. I mean, so it is possible that things will be moving in the right direction by the midterms, but they won't be back to normal, they won't be back to pre war. And there is the possibility that you wind up with, I mean, this is Kathryn Rempel territory, but people who study private credit markets are a little freaked out, and the private credit markets suddenly are looking a little bit like the people who are bundling tranches of very bad subprime loans right before the Great Recession. It is possible that this disruption causes a larger slowdown, which isn't just about Logistics and tips us over to actual deal recession. And the economy was quite weak going into the war. Very, very limited job growth, almost flat job growth. The Fed was looking to cut rates because the economy was slowing so badly. But the war creates upward pressure on energy prices, which creates upward pressure on inflation. I think the OECD was saying that looking at 4.2% projected inflation for this year, which, I mean, if you're the Fed, that makes you very, very anxious about cutting rates. I think they'll probably leave the rates as they are.
Sarah Longwell
Well, that's what it looks like. The Dow's gone up just a bit, basically on the promise that the Fed wasn't going to re. Start raising rates again. So they just leave them because they had priced in cuts, a rate cut. And so now this is what, like, this is why we're going to see a correction. But I think that the, the market, like the fact that it was, that it has been so manipulated by Trump. I think that they, it's got to start pricing in the fact that things are not going well. Like it has been untethered to reality now for a while and it's only now starting to look slightly more tethered. But when I saw his tweet this morning, I'm like, is the market gonna buy this? Is the market gonna buy that? There's. Oh, no, it's almost, it's almost definitely resolved, except maybe we're gonna bomb the crap out of them imminently.
JVL
The market is really about what's happening in two minutes, right? The market is about flash trading. And I mean, the broader risk is like the AI companies that are propping up the entire American stock market right now. If the combination of private credit and inflationary pressures on energy costs and access to silicon from Taiwan all make it so that the AI bubble pops, I mean, God knows what's happening, right? We have, we have a SpaceX. There's another thing that's coming down. SpaceX is having its IPO in June. It is, everybody is like losing their minds over it. They're like, it's gonna debut over a trillion dollars. It's gonna be a trillion dollar company on day one and the biggest IPO of all time. And I mean, if there's a market correction going into that, right? I mean, you could just see it as being a cautionary tale that we all look back on four years from now, or maybe not. Maybe it'll all be fine and it'll debut and It'll be a $2 trillion company. But man, there's A lot of. There's a lot of headwinds mounting. And he's not out yet. Right.
Sarah Longwell
And he's not out yet.
JVL
He's not out yet.
Sarah Longwell
Which is the main reason for doing this take about this poll, which is to say if this is the first of the next batch kind of of polls.
JVL
Yeah.
Sarah Longwell
And we're starting to see him in the low 30s. That starts to be a real new territory.
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Tyler Redick
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JVL
Wait, what?
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JVL
Now, on the other hand, it's not all bad news for him. Over the weekend, Brendan Carr was at CPAC and he had this to say,
Brendan Carr
and President Trump is winning. Look at the results so far. PBS defunded, NPR defunded. Joy Reid gone from msnbc. Sleepy eyes. Chuck Todd gone. Jim Acosta, gone. John Dickerson, gone. Colbert is leaving. CBS is under new ownership. And soon enough CNN is have new ownership as well.
Sarah Longwell
So, Sarah, I cannot believe this.
JVL
You'll have to remind me. True conservatism believes that the chief executive should be involved in the HR matters of private companies. Right? Right. It should be winning for the President to force private companies to fire the employees that the President doesn't like. Or is that. Or is that communism?
Sarah Longwell
Do you know who was livid at the idea that the federal government would interfere in any way in the business dealings of these companies? A guy named Brendan Carr. When he was mad at Joe Biden for like, I don't know what, but not like it was like they, I Don't know. They, they tried to. I think they did something with Sinclair and, and I don't know, maybe Brendan Carr was right about that. Maybe they shouldn't have been mucking around in it. But that's weird that this same guy now is giddy, giddy at the idea of getting random anchors fired from msnbc. Also, I don't think Trump really had anything to do with that. But maybe, I don't know. But in any event, what was the most telling to me, this is the kind of thing that just happens in the natural course of things now that I. It's like that tweet where I'm like, this should be insane. This should be the kind of thing the FCC chair gloating and calling people fake news and sleepy eyed Chuck Todd, what is happening? This was again, a quasi, an independent agency. But the thing that struck me the most, and I know this is, this is in your territory here. The idea that his idea of Trump winning was CBS being taken over by Ellison and Barry Weiss. If I was Barry Weiss, the level of humiliation that I would feel, the level of undermining that I would feel at the idea that the FCC chair is saying, quite blatantly these guys are doing what Trump says and look how Trump is winning because they now run cbs. The idea that Trump winning is explicitly connected to Ellison and Barry taking over CBS and then CNN should be shame worthy of anybody running a media company.
JVL
I mean, you know, not when you're heterodox and you, you're just out there being fair and fearless. And also, I'm not a doctor, but I have heard that shame and humiliation are often cured with money. You just take money and you rub it, you rub the money on your shame and humiliation and the shame and humiliation just goes away. Supposedly never tried it myself. All right, yeah, so that's what's happening. Donald Trump is losing the American people, but he is consolidating the media behind his cronies and is using the power of the central government and the legal system to bend the media ecosystem to his will. I would say that this is a pattern that we've seen in places like Hungary where Viktor Orban is incredibly unpopular amongst actual people, but has successfully taken over the universities and the media and so is really trying to hang on to power. Maybe it won't happen here. Sarah, thanks for being with me. Everybody else, hit like, hit. Subscribe, follow the channel, leave a comment, tell, tell us how happy you are that Sarah is back and we'll be back on the next level. Tomorrow. Good luck America.
Tyler Redick
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JVL
a lot more awesome.
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Tyler Redick
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Date: March 30, 2026
Host(s): JVL & Sarah Longwell
Podcast: Bulwark Takes
Episode Summary by The Bulwark Team
In this episode, JVL and Sarah Longwell break down a dramatic new polling result from UMass Amherst showing Donald Trump's job approval rating plummeting to 33%—his lowest thus far. They analyze the factors behind this collapse, discuss the implications for Trump's presidency, and examine the broader ramifications for the U.S. economy, foreign policy (especially regarding Iran), and the media landscape. The episode offers a rapid-fire, candid conversation on the political, economic, and cultural fallout from the ongoing Iran war, as well as Trump's attempts to manipulate both public opinion and the news cycle.
(01:03 - 02:49)
(03:12 - 06:56)
(05:52 - 08:08)
(08:08 - 14:21)
Economic Peril:
Trump’s Likely Offramp:
Real-World Consequences:
(12:21 - 15:29)
(15:31 - 15:48)
(16:53 - 19:36)
Media Consolidation:
JVL’s Sarcasm:
Sarah’s Rebuke:
JVL Puts It in Context:
On the Shock Poll:
On Trump’s Tweets:
On Voter Pain:
On Media Capture:
For listeners who missed the episode: This was a bracing, insightful, and often biting real-time snapshot of a presidency facing both collapse in public support and consolidation in the power structures that matter most for its survival.