Shortly before Thanksgiving, as his approval rating continued to sink, Donald Trump published an all-caps boast to his social media platform. “I have just gotten the highest poll numbers of my ‘political career,’” the president wrote, embracing an idiosyncratic approach to quotation marks that I will never understand.
About a week later, Gallup released the results of its latest national survey and found the Republican’s approval rating sinking to a woeful 36% — a low point of his second term, and almost as low as Trump’s public support in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack.
This week, a poll from The Associated Press also found the president at a 36% approval rating, though this wasn’t the most jarring element of the data. From the AP’s report on its national survey:
President Donald Trump’s approval on the economy and immigration have fallen substantially since March, according to a new AP-NORC poll, the latest indication that two signature issues that got him elected barely a year ago could be turning into liabilities as his party begins to gear up for the 2026 midterms.
Only 31% of U.S. adults now approve of how Trump is handling the economy, the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds. That is down from 40% in March and marks the lowest economic approval he’s registered in an AP-NORC poll in his first or second term.
While the president routinely (and falsely) claims, as he did again on Thursday afternoon, that the current U.S. economy is the single greatest economy in the nation’s history, a whopping 67% of Americans — two-thirds of the country — said they disapprove of his handling of economic affairs.
Shortly after the AP’s data reached the public, Trump published a curious message on his social media platform, peddling a variety of familiar nonsense about Joe Biden, inflation, consumer prices and the effects of his trade tariffs.
But then he turned to self-pity.
“When will I get credit for having created, with No Inflation, perhaps the Greatest Economy in the History of our Country?” the president wrote. “When will people understand what is happening? When will Polls reflect the Greatness of America at this point in time, and how bad it was just one year ago?”
Trump didn’t literally ask, “Why aren’t people trusting my lies over their own wallets and life experiences?” but that seemed to be the subtext.
If he’s genuinely confused, I think I can help. Americans are confronting rising consumer costs, rising energy costs, a contracting manufacturing sector and the worst job growth since the Great Recession. That’s not a matter of opinion; it’s just what’s happening. If Trump wants to deflect blame, he can try. If he wants to appeal to the American public for patience, he’s welcome to do so. But to push delusional claims about an economic nirvana that clearly does not exist and then whine that people are showing him insufficient love in the wake of failure is pathetic. At a White House event on Thursday afternoon, the Republican declared, “When the real pollsters start doing the polls, I think you’re going to see some really fantastic numbers.” But real pollsters are doing polls — and the numbers are only really fantastic for Democrats hoping to win back Congress.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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