'Clobbered’: Trump’s popularity 'collapsing rapidly' less than 100 days into second term
The turmoil set off by Donald Trump’s Rose Garden “Liberation Day” announcement that ushered in a sweeping set of tariffs on international goods and sunk markets to historic lows is also having a major effect on the president’s popularity, Puck News’ Peter Hamby reported Tuesday.
And that could spell the end of his second term post-inauguration honeymoon, which one polling analyst noted traditionally “don’t end in April.”
“These economic numbers to me scream red flag, red flag, red flag,” Lakshya Jain, a polling analyst and partner at Split Ticket, told Puck News. “This is supposed to be Trump’s honeymoon!”
Jain was reacting to a stinging set of polling numbers that gauged the public’s perception of Trump in the days following his tariff announcement and amid threats that the country could soon find itself teetering into a recession.
“Trump’s economic agenda is very much getting clobbered in the polls,” according to Hamby, a founding partner of Puck News. “This week, we got even more data showing that Trump is inflicting enormous damage on his own presidency, threatening the administration’s political capital even before we’ve reached the 100-day mark.”
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Hamby pointed his readers to a Navigator Research poll released Tuesday, which he noted “was conducted entirely post-Liberation Day” and found that a “clear majority of Americans—55 percent—now disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, his worst net approval rating on that issue in the history of Navigator’s tracking.”
But, Hamby added: “Here’s a dagger: 42 percent of Republicans now say they feel ‘uneasy’ about their personal financial situation, up 12 points since December.” And things aren’t expected to get any better, the journalist wrote.
The poll also showed that “a decisive majority of Americans now say the economy is getting worse, up more than 20 points since Trump’s victory last year."
“If he is underwater now, by June, July, August, people are going to run out of patience,” Jain, the polling analyst, told the news outlet. “Here’s the thing. Not everyone cares about immigration. Not everyone cares about trans kids or whatever social justice issue of the day. But everyone cares about the cost of living, and everyone cares about a recession.”
She added: “Any way you slice it, it’s terrible.”