“Trump’s Sad Honeymoon Is Over” Sayeth Gallup Poll Via Rick Wilson

We have been deluged with so many intense emotions and images the past six months that we are a nation, two nations in fact, living in unreality. The MAGA Republicans are stewing in a melange which ranges from giddy triumph to nervously paranoid, and with good reason. The numbers that you will see below will show you why that’s the case. And the Democrats are in shell shock. Every day it becomes evident that the Kubler-Ross paradigm of dealing with death/grief is in play. There are five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance and we’re in all five at once. Our hearts and minds are numb.

So let’s get into the actual reality of what is happening. Yes, the King of the Boors is back in power. Yes, the geopolitical state is teetering precipitously. Yes, the threatened cuts to essential programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid foremost among them, have anxious Republicans forming alliances with Democrats, some for the first time. When Josh Hawley decides that he’s better off in the bi-partisan boat, you know a dramatic sea change has taken place. And don’t forget Geogia Congressman Rich McCormick who had a disastrous town hall meeting when he suggested hungry kids shouldn’t get school lunches.  He was supposed to explain it all to Jake Tapper, but bailed at the last minute, evidently too scared to take another shellacking. There will be many more of these stories.

So let us get centered on the Gallup Poll and the bad news for Donald Trump. (Pssst: 83% of Americans disapprove of him letting the J6 convicted criminals out of prison and yet another one of them got arrested outside the Capitol today.) Here’s Rick Wilson’s take.

Things are high-suck, low-reward for Donald Trump, and for all the risk, danger, and damage he’s delivered so far, the voters, to use a technical polling term, no likey.

His approval numbers are the worst of any President in his first month in history, save one. The only President who had worse numbers this early was there from 2016-2021…you know…Donald Trump.

It started bad. It’s getting worse. Inflation is up, polls are down, and the Trump agenda is making Americans more than a little nervous. Add in the chaos of Elon Musk’s rampage — delivering not reform but chaos and real financial pain on red states— and you’ve got a recipe for a polling nightmare.

And it’s only the beginning.

The stock market’s jittery over tariffs. Housing prices in Florida (and elsewhere) are dipping like a cheap carnival ride—swelling inventories, wary buyers. Interest rates? Not dropping anytime soon. Infrastructure spending is being chopped like the rest of government. The little defense-spending boomlet from manufacturing arms for Ukraine? Over.

The major polling outlets’ right-direction/wrong-track indices have more bad news. Biden was weighed down by a deep post-COVID weariness, and his physical infirmity on full display. That sent his approval numbers into a ditch and helped doom Kamala Harris in 2024. Now, the new WaPo/Ipsos poll shows Trump is upside down at 45-53%. His strongly disapprove stands at 39%, with strongly approve at just 27%.

Biden’s curse was a booming economy voters thought was in crisis. Trump’s got the same problem, only he’s making it worse.

One percent say the economy is excellent, 26% say it’s good… and then it all goes south. A whopping 73% say it’s somewhere between “not good” and “who lit the dumpster on fire?” Many of those folks wanted cheaper gas and groceries, not invasions of Gaza or Greenland. Trump can’t fix it, won’t fix it, and the 2026 election prospects hinge almost entirely on that issue.

Trump’s wounds are self-inflicted.

Voters think he’s exceeding his authority. They strongly believe he should follow court orders. Have they met Donald Trump?

Fifty-three percent disapprove of his handling of the economy—his supposed “secret sauce.” His fans still chant, “He’s a billionaire,” as if that alone will magically solve their economic woes. Spoiler alert: it won’t.

Tariffs are already crushing the economy. He’s on the verge of triggering a regional recession in the massive economy of the D.C. area, and his Elon Musk Tax Cut is a middle finger to everyone making less than $750k a year. As the House and Senate wrestle with his absurd tax plan next week, expect eyes to shift from one set of disasters (foreign policy) to another (the economy). While 92% of Americans say food prices are too high, our poor, beleaguered billionaire class will get the tax cut they “need” for a Mars colony or a superyacht upgrade.

Fifty-four percent don’t like how he’s running the government—and that’ll drop further if the DOGE mess escalates. They hate the mass firings, the grant cutoffs, and banning agencies from talking about disease outbreaks.

They (correctly) think he’s a liar. His “honest and trustworthy” score? A solid 35-62%.

Now you’ve got the basic broad outline. But Trump is seemingly oblivious to all this. He bullied the Governor of Maine, Janet Mills, at a White House luncheon today because she was insufficiently worshipful of him when he demanded to know what Maine intended to do about transgender athletes and she replied, “I will follow all state and federal laws,” to which Trump testily (and incomprehensibly) replied that she was finished in politics.

So you see where this is going. If any other president was this far underwater, this fast, the White House team would be advising him to get on message and stay there, stat. But he’s not worried. He’s out playing golf and when he does do a *presser* or a White House luncheon, it’s to insult people. Trump believes his own press. He believes he is omniscient. The Gallup Poll is telling him otherwise, but he most likely doesn’t even know it exists or is disregarding it, if he does.

His lone bright spot is immigration but he’s not even happy with that. The head of ICE was replaced today because Trump’s “frustrated” with the low deportation numbers. The black comedy here, is that Trump, for all his theatrical images of shackled detainees sent aloft on military planes, is lagging well behind the number of deportations that Joe Biden did.

As shell shocked as you may be, if you’re a Democrat, know that this house of cards is going to collapse and is already in the process of doing so. The Republicans know this. There is a civil war brewing there and the Hawley defection is Exhibit “A” to that notion. Get ready for stormy weather, Donald. Of your own creation. And soon it will be glub, glub, as you sink beneath the waves. Then everybody get ready for a post-MAGA reality which mirrors post-Nuremburg, where all of Hitler’s once-faith swore that they were never really Nazis, they just went along to get along.

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