Trump's approval ratings go south-- fast

Trump's support crossed the rubicon this week, flipping from net positive to net negative as his honeymoon came to an abrupt end.

While it slowly erodes my soul to admit that Trump had enjoyed a net positive approval rating up to this point in his presidency, you might find some solace in the fact that the honeymoon is officially over. According to new polling from Washington Post-Ipsos, Quinnipiac, CNN, and Gallup, Trump’s approval rating is underwater in literally all of them.

For Post-Ipsos, it’s 43% approve, 48% disapprove.

For Reuters, it’s 44% approve, 51% disapprove.

For Quinnipiac, it’s 45% approve, 49% disapprove.

For CNN, it’s 47% approve, 52% disapprove.

What’s worse, we’re only one month into his presidency. As far as honeymoons are concerned, this is the equivalent of newlyweds getting in their first fight on the way to the airport.

The cause for these dismal numbers, unsurprisingly, is Trump shepherding unpopular policies— ones that he didn’t run on but was perfectly content to try and implement only after he was no longer accountable to voters.

Per the chart above, public approval is underwater on Trump’s efforts to end DEI programs in the government, ban trans military members from serving, pardon January 6 insurrectionists (violent and nonviolent), effectuate mass firings of federal employees, shut down USAID, and block health agencies from communicating with the American people. The sole issue on which Trump retains a shred of majority support is deporting undocumented immigrants—but there’s a major caveat:

“Americans strongly oppose deporting undocumented immigrants who aren’t criminals (57-39), who arrived as children (70-26) and who have U.S. citizen children (66-30).”

But perhaps no other issue is quite as unpopular as Trump deputizing Elon Musk as his enforcer. According to The Washington Post:

Musk having a prominent role in the administration is viewed as a “bad thing” (54-28) by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio. The Post-Ipsos poll showed Americans disapprove by a similarly wide margin (52-26) of Musk “shutting down federal government programs that he decides are unnecessary.” And Americans said 63 to 34 that they are concerned about Musk’s team getting access to their data, which is the subject of high-profile legal fights. Even 37 percent of Republican-leaning voters said they are at least “somewhat” concerned about Musk getting their data.

It is wholly unsurprising that voters across the political spectrum do not support the richest person on Earth who derives much of his wealth from government contracts being the unilateral arbiter of who can regulate the very agencies that oversee his companies, all the while having unfettered access to our most closely guarded and sensitive private data, including banking and tax information. And if we didn’t live in the upside down, Republicans - of all people - would be the first to protest against this unprecedented power grab. It’s their collective cowardice that’s suddenly rendered them silent— but Americans can plainly see what Trump’s sycophants refuse to acknowledge about the dangers of Musk and the agenda he’s executing.

I want to be clear that these bad poll numbers are not a death knell for Trump, as much as I would like to say they are. *But* they are the beginnings of a chink in the armor, and they’re coming sooner than any other modern American president. And while Trump may enjoy the bully pulpit of the presidency, the legislative branch contracting every ounce of its autonomy to him, and Elon’s unlimited funds, what he needs most is popular support. Once he loses that, all of the groveling congressional Republicans in the world aren’t going to help him. We’re not there yet, but the trends are clear. And they don’t bode well for Trump or his party.