This may seem trivial but it’s not. It’s key to understanding what is going on in Washington, D.C. these days. Donald Trump received the lowest poll numbers of his second term this week. Yet he took to Truth Social and brayed in all-caps about how these same polls were in fact his “HIGHEST.” Here’s why this is significant. Trump has managed to resoundingly lie to the American public and still they vote for him. That is an important thing, not to be underestimated. So does Trump simply believe that if he just lies hard enough, America will believe — even when empirical evidence shows that Trump is lying? I think that’s the case. I think Trump seriously believes this. Or, he is so desperate that he’ll try simply anything, throw it at the wall, pray that it sticks. Daily Beast:
It is unclear what polls Trump is referring to, as multiple polls taken in November have found that Trump’s approval rating is at its lowest for his second term.
These include an Ipsos/Reuters poll that puts his approval rating at -22, and an AP-NORC poll that puts it at -26. Per RealClearPolling, the president’s most favorable poll comes from the right-leaning Rasmussen Reports, which puts him at -4.
The president’s late-night nemesis, ABC host Jimmy Kimmel, made the numbers part of his opening monologue on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Thursday night. While addressing a Trump Truth Social post calling him a “bum” with “VERY POOR TELEVISION RATINGS,” Kimmel said, “If anyone knows about bad ratings, it’s this guy.” He then threw to a montage of news anchors addressing Trump’s sinking approval rating.
Kimmel also joked that he knew Trump watches his show live during the monologue by checking the time of Trump’s Truth Social attack.
“12:49 a.m., 11 minutes after the show ended on the East Coast,“ he said. ”Which is nice. He watches us live. Hi, Mr. President,” Kimmel said with a wave. “Thanks for watching us on TV instead of on YouTube… It’s viewers like you who keep us on the air.” […]
Per CNN data analyst Harry Enten, Trump is scoring a -34 on inflation, down 37 points from his +3 at the start of his second term.
The cost of living has become a hot-button issue after Republicans were shellacked in the November 2025 elections as Democrats ran campaigns focused on addressing affordability.
Here’s the thing with inflation and affordability. Trump may be able to lie about government figures which are now in blackout, such as jobs creation. Unemployment figures are a bit harder to hide because those are done by the states and those figures are skyrocketing this past quarter.
But Trump cannot hide grocery prices because that’s where the average American has to go at least once every few weeks, if not more often, and the prices are staring us all in the face. So Trump cannot lie about those because per PolitiFact, “grocery prices have continued to rise, contrary to Trump’s repeated assertions that they’ve fallen.”
Trump can tell the big lies. He can lie about things that the average American has no way of checking up on, but he cannot lie about the issues which the average American knows far better than he does, and that’s groceries, inflation and unemployment.
But I do expect him to continue to try. And then what Democrats need to do is copy over his lies from social media, or wherever he disseminates them, and put together attack ads with the truth of these matters, side by side. Zohran Mamdani ran on affordability and the Republicans were going to crucify Mamdani as a “communist” during the midterms, but Trump shot that out of the water for them just yesterday. Now what Democrats need to do is clever messaging to bring the truth home to disgusted voters. And remember, it’s still November, 2025. Voters will be a lot more disgusted the closer we get to election day in 2026.
Fighting lies with the truth has always been a winning formula.
Truth always wins in the end because truth is reality, and reality always trumps fantasy.
There’s a liquidity problem bubbling up in the money markets that could be the tip of something very big. It could trigger a financial meltdown on par with the Great Recession. As the saying goes, the stock market is the last to know, but when it does it could not only take a bite out of trump’s ass, but swallow him whole like the sharks he fears most.