Trump driven mad by abysmal poll numbers

The 100 day polling continues to be dismal for President Donald Trump and his administration. The Washington Post/ABC/Ipsos and the AP/NORC poll out in the last couple of days even show him with a 39% approval rating which is astonishing for a president this early in his term. It’s the presidential honeymoon from hell — for all of us, unfortunately.

One of the most unexpected results of these new polls is the fact that Trump is underwater on every issue now, even his supposed strong suits, immigration and the economy. On the latter he is in terrible shape hovering in the low 30s in some of the polls and even on immigration people are rejecting his tactics. Across the board on every other issue, from tariffs to the assault on DEI to the reckless cutting of government agencies and odious foreign policy, a majority rejects his actions.

Now, it must be said that Republicans, by and large, still support Trump. His numbers aren’t in the 90s but they’re still pretty high, usually in the 60s to 70s and Republican officials living in their cloistered little cult compounds for the most part consider that to be all they need to justify staying the course. Trump believes he is the president of Trumplandia, not America, so he’s fine with that too. He’s so lost in his own reality in which anything that doesn’t comport with his increasingly delusional hype is dismissed as fake that I don’t think he’s even aware of how fully he’s been rejected by the vast majority of Americans.

There are some Republicans who have to worry, however. House members in swing districts and senators in purple states are probably starting to feel a little bit antsy. If this pattern follows previous midterms, they could be looking at a blow out if Trump doesn’t improve his numbers. This may play out over the next month as the Congress comes back into session and takes up the budget talks in earnest. Whatever divisions exist are going to manifest over the next month and we’ll begin to see if there are any real cracks in the coalition in light of Trump’s pathetic approval ratings.

The Democrats are trying to bring attention to some of these unpopular issues and have had some success recently. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s 24-hr floor speech, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Fighting Oligarchy Tour, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollan’s trip to the Salvadoran prison to see wrongfully deported immigrant Kilmar Obrego Garcia are all excellent examples of tactics to expose the Trump administration’s extreme policies to more media scrutiny. The town halls all over the country (which Trump is now demanding be met with violence) are taking it to places where the Republicans are afraid to show up and big protests are happening with regularity.

But there remains some division within the party about whether they should spend their time hammering Trump and his accomplices on their authoritarian takeover or concentrate on the perennial “kitchen table issues.” Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the Republicans are using police state tactics “because they want to distract people from the fact that our economy is in a tailspin thanks to them, their tariffs” and California Gov. Gavin Newsom exhorted Democrats not to “get distracted by distractions” referring to the Abrego Garcia case. And according to the Washington Post, the leadership has made the decision to party like it’s 2005 and focus on cuts to Social Security:

Early Democratic ads are targeting Republican senators on Social Security. Democrats have visited Social Security offices around the country, sometimes getting turned away and going public. Senate Democrats have set up a “war room” to deliver the message.

The message has been a perennial for decades now, mostly because Republicans have always wanted to cut the program and there’s every reason to believe they will do everything they can to cripple it. According to the Post, Trump is worried and reportedly upset to see it in the news and everyone wishes Elon Musk had never publicly called it a Ponzi scheme. There’s no doubt that the issue still has juice, particularly with seniors who are very reliable voters. But it’s myopic to see this as the only potent political issue and these new polls show that the American people are having no problem wrapping their minds around the full spectrum of atrocities being perpetrated by this administration.

For instance, I would point out that if there is one kitchen table issue that has not been fully explained to the voters it’s the extent to which Trump and his acolytes are taking a wrecking ball to medical research. If anyone thinks that people don’t care about or that it’s a distraction they need to think again. According to the Post/ABC/Ipsos poll, people oppose reducing federal funding for medical research 77% -21%. Nobody voted for that and I can guarantee that people sit around their kitchen tables worrying about cancer and Alzheimer’s and ALS and yes, measles and COVID, and the vast majority support their tax dollars going to find treatments and cures. They don’t want clinical trials interrupted, grants terminated and they certainly don’t want foreign cancer scientists with specific and unique expertise to be detained and threatened with deportation for no reason. In fact, foreign scientists are no longer willing to come to the U.S. and many American researchers are thinking of leaving the country.

I doubt most people know the scope of what’s going on and the Democrats should tell them. According to the Post/ABC poll voters already say, by a margin of 70-28%, that they don’t think the federal government should be telling universities how to operate. Imagine how they will feel when they find out that in order to win a culture war battle against DEI and “woke” policies, Trump is withholding billions that are spent almost entirely on biomedical research. It’s enraging.

And that’s not all. Just a couple of weeks ago the Washington Post reported on a White House budget document that proposes:

Under a more than 30 percent cut to the agency’s budget, public health initiatives aimed at HIV/AIDS prevention would no longer exist, major parts of the National Institutes of Health would be abolished and the FDA would cease routine inspections at food facilities. Funding for top Trump administration priorities — like programs on autism, chronic disease, drug abuse and mental health — is also on the chopping block.

I realize that this is just another of the many horrific cuts all across the federal government but it seems to me that it’s a particularly potent one. This is a top line concern for most people and it intersects with DOGE, immigration, foreign policy and Trump’s reckless abandonment of America’s role as a leader in science.

Maybe the MAGA hardcore and woo-woo followers of RFK Jr. want to put their lives in the hands of proponents of raw milk and Ivermectin cocktails, but I’m fairly sure the rest of us would prefer that we remain in the 21st century where kids don’t die of measles and cures for new viruses can be put on the fast track and save many millions of lives. Americans will sit around their kitchen tables and be grateful for the politicians who make that case.