President Donald Trump’s approval rating dropped to a shocking low of 30 percent in a new Pew Research poll that was released Thursday. That makes the third separate and respected poll that has him dangerously close to the 20’s. AP-NORC had him at 31 percent approval last week, and Reuters at 32 percent in September. In both cases, it’s the lowest they’ve ever been. The only time Pew has had Trump with a lower approval was the week after January 6.
The Pew poll details are even more devastating to the White House. Not only do 68 percent of the country disapprove of the job he is doing, but his own base is fleeing as well. 95 percent of his voters approved of his job when the term began, but that dropped to 75 percent in July and is now 67 percent. That's a 28-point drop in less than two years. A third of the people who voted for him have walked away.
This is a historic collapse, and it’s happening three weeks before a midterm.
The Pew poll was taken at a revealing pivot in the Republican midterm strategy, and one that doesn’t bode well for Trump. Last week he hit the road and hosted rallies designed to help red-state candidates in shockingly close races. He explained the strategy last week: the problem is “promotion”; voters aren’t seeing enough of him, and Pew started its poll by going into the field the week the tour began. While he was in Oklahoma, Alabama, and Ohio on three straight nights, then Nebraska on Monday and San Antonio on Wednesday. Tonight it’s Syracuse.
Trump insisted his campaign rallies would fix the numbers, but in truth, he’s made them worse. That’s not just my hot take; Ken Paxton says the same, according to leaked audio following the GOP’s midterm convention held in his backyard in Dallas. The Republican candidates he’s popped in to help are increasingly acting like people who wish he’d stayed home.
Mike Rogers spent his Michigan debate Thursday night promising to end Trump’s trade war with Canada. When MS NOW’s Michael Sheinelle asked him afterward whether he wanted Trump to come campaign with him, Rogers talked about tariffs saving cherry farmers near Traverse City and about no tax on overtime before he finally allowed that “he’d be welcome.” It was less than convincing.
Reuters reports that 41 Republican candidates in 62 competitive House and Senate races are actively trying to keep some distance from Trump. CNN’s Jeff Zeleny attended Monday’s Nebraska rally and reported “one of the quietest” applause lines of the night came when Trump blamed Joe Biden. Jim VandeHei said Republicans are privately “begging Trump to stop doing things that seem to make it harder for them,” and was gobsmacked by the 30% approval rating during a Friday appearance on Morning Joe.
Again, it’s a historic collapse that, in as much as we still believe the polls, suggests big-picture think pieces that spell the end of Trumpism and RIP, MAGA. (Don’t worry … already wrote it!)
But even his rallies are held in smaller venues and are still not filled, and the sales of red MAGA caps have slowed to a trickle; none of that has touched the government he runs.
Within 24 hours of Pew’s latest release, a Justice Department lawyer stood in front of Judge Timothy Kelly and defended Trump’s recent White House ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico by telling him “it’s really the president making these decisions,” and that it is “within the discretion of the president to say, I am concerned with a specific reporter.” No, that was really his defense.
On the very same day, news broke that prosecutors from the Civil Rights Division had presented evidence to a grand jury in Washington on whether Cassidy Hutchinson lied to Congress. The former White House aide gave damning testimony about Trump’s behavior on Jan 6th which drew 13 million viewers. The case is running out of the Civil Rights Division rather than the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which the NY Times’s Michael Schmidt said on Morning Joe tells you some prosecutors “didn’t want to touch this.”
On the same day, Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced that his department won’t accept new or pending permanent labor certification applications from Microsoft, Adobe and six IT contractors. Subpoenas were already out. JD Vance defended the suspension by saying it would last “as long as it needs to.”
Before the day was out, Trump posted that the United States “will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the midterm elections,” in response to multiple reports that it was a plan to help flagging campaigns and, I don’t know, declare victory?
That was JUST one day’s news, on the day the lowest Pew number of his second term landed. Conventional wisdom states that when a president gets very low ratings, they typically get more careful, and this one is getting anything but. Instead of slowing down, he’s getting busy.
A president at 55 percent approval is incentivized to keep voters happy and protect the party. But because of his low numbers, Trump’s got zero reason to accommodate anybody or anything other than his own id.
If the vote goes the way the polls say, the two months after the midterms are precisely when Trump has the least reason to care what anyone thinks. No one new will have been sworn in yet to check his power.
Trump’s collapse in the polls just three-plus weeks ahead of the midterms is a big story deserving of all the coverage it's getting.
A much harder, more important story is what a collapsing President Trump does, how he acts, and what he does with his power, which won’t expire after the votes are counted.
The one promise he’s made about Iran is good through election day. Jake Tapper read that post on the air and asked, “So should we mark our calendars for November 4th?”
I am.