Trump Just Got His Worst Poll Yet. The Alarming Part Is What He's Doing About It

His worst numbers are gas prices and inflation. His best is election integrity. Guess which one he spent this week fighting for, and guess who has to cast the votes.

CNN released a new poll Wednesday morning that at first glance reads like evidence of a presidency coming apart. Donald Trump is at 34 percent approval, his lowest in CNN’s polling. Perhaps more concerning for the White House? A record 73 percent of Americans say he has not paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems. Half the country strongly disapproves of him, which is the worst that figure has been in either his first or second term.

There is more in that poll than the topline, and one can reasonably assume that he and his staff have been read in on what it reveals. Given the week Trump just had, it makes sense that somebody in the White House has.

Now it’s worth caveating that CNN’s polling has historically produced the least charitable numbers for Trump compared to other pollsters, along with a run of record lows this term. He’s dismissed the network’s numbers as rigged going back to 2016.

But this survey specifically shows where he is weak, and the political ground is uneven in a way that begs further inquiry, especially on the issues he campaigned on.

On gas prices he sits at a paltry 21 percent. Inflation? 25 percent. Iran is 28, which CNN’s reporting understandably groups as a single interconnected weakness. This tracks with a CBS survey from last weekend that found the same shape from another angle. Most Americans say Trump’s attention goes to tariffs and building projects while their incomes fall behind.

But election integrity sits at 41 percent, which is currently his best, or is it least bad, issue in the poll and the one plot of political ground on which he still has something resembling an advantage.

And his actions this week tracked that map precisely. To wit:

On Monday Trump asked the Senate to surrender its August recess and stay in Washington for the SAVE America Act, and told Republicans to kill the filibuster to move it. Senate Majority Leader John Thune went on Fox News that evening and said the effort to kill the filibuster has no chance, adding that was a message he’d given the president more than once. At 9:09 Tuesday night, Trump posted on Truth Social that Ron Johnson was working with Senate leadership on a budget resolution, the first step toward folding as much of the SAVE America Act as possible into a budget bill. He then pointed out that a resolution like that passes with a simple majority.

So to summarize, Trump demanded the 60-vote, was told by his own leader that it would never happen, and found a 51-vote vehicle for forcing the issue within 24 hours.

Impressive maneuvering, sure, but it ignores the fact that gas prices are arguably the country’s biggest problem. Trump’s clearly sees the benefits in his continuing to hammer election integrity, regardless of how little evidence supports the premise beyond the fact that huge majorities of Americans want elections to be free and fair.

Trump knows that fuel costs and inflation can’t be fixed by August, especially as the Iran war continues to quagmire. More importantly, none of these issues offer him anything he can immediately announce as a win. But an election-security fight? That produces the thing he needs: immediate enthusiasm among his base. Republican enthusiasm for the rest of his term has collapsed to 19 percent from 38 percent last spring.

Though it be madness, there’s method to it. Or at least it makes logical political sense. The alarming part is who pays for this rational behavior.

It’s not Trump who, again, needs a fight he can win before August. But Thune needs to keep his majority and his institution in one piece, and vulnerable senators need to avoid spending a night casting votes that become attack ads in October. Voters need cheaper gas, which nobody in Washington can deliver by Labor Day. These interests used to point in roughly the same direction, but this week they didn’t, and that’s pretty ugly for a party staring at midterms a hundred days out.

Attaching the SAVE Act to a budget resolution opens the door to some legislative hijinks, namely a vote-a-rama. Once debate time runs out, senators can force a rapid series of amendment votes. The roll calls travel much farther than the procedural explanations that follow. Democrats will write amendments whose only purpose is to force a bad vote, and Republicans will have to take every one of them.

CNN’s Manu Raju posted on X that this puts vulnerable Republicans on the defensive, which is putting it gently. The White House wants to stuff even more into the measure, and Republicans are already fighting about what belongs in it. You don’t often see Senate Republicans in open mutiny against a Trump White House. They can see November from here.

The catch? None of it becomes law. A budget resolution doesn’t change anything, but only sets up the instructions for a reconciliation bill later. That bill runs straight into the Byrd Rule, which throws out provisions whose budget effects are merely incidental. Like I said, legislative hijinks. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Voter-registration mandates are not a spending program by any stretch, which leaves most of the SAVE America Act in real trouble in front of the parliamentarian. Trump concedes as much in his own post, promising as much of the bill as possible rather than the bill.

So the votes are the whole point. The bill isn’t going anywhere, but the roll calls are real, and Trump doesn’t have to cast a single one. Senate Republicans do, and they’ll own them.

None of which makes it good policy, or even good politics for the Republican Party. It is rational only from Trump’s increasingly separate point of view. In fact, it feels like an ego trip of futility, or just chasing a more favorable narratives that give you a headline win.

Trump doesn’t win back the half of the country that can’t stand him by picking a fight over voter rolls. Firing up the base with a hundred days to go doesn’t get him a single new voter, and it might cost him a few. And the senators being handed these votes are running in exactly the states where those voters decide the race.

Trump knows the same polling numbers everyone else does and is coming to the only conclusion available to him. The country’s problems and Trump’s problems have clearly separated.

Now the thing to watch is whether the resolution actually gets called before recess. Trump has found a way to answer his worst poll by making Senate Republicans vote on his best issue.