As the adage goes, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” This peculiarity of the human condition is precisely what appears to be giving President Donald Trump pre-midterm jitters. At the recent GOP annual retreat, the commander-in-chief wondered out loud, “I wish you could explain to me what the hell is going on with the mind of the public because we have the right policy.” Polling shows strongly that his second term is in the doldrums, but is Trump right to blame public perception?
Polling and Policy Hits
There’s a long history of politicos blaming the public for election losses without casting a mirror back at themselves; more often than not, the hopeful candidate just has a blind spot in self-reflection. We saw this with former Vice President Kamala Harris’ stubborn refusal to take an ounce of blame for her historic 2024 loss. What could it be that Trump is not seeing?
Looking at the president’s general approval rating, according to Liberty Nation News’ Public Square polling tool, he’s currently underwater by around 7.7%. It’s not a great position to be in; however, this figure is way above his first-term average (-10.6%). And if we examine President Barack Obama’s overall polling for his second term, he landed just shy of -4 points (a far cry from the plus-20 he had in his first year as president). So this is not new territory for Trump. But he is really having difficulty in the all-important policy realm.
The Public Square tracks polling averages for six key areas: immigration, inflation, economy, foreign policy, crime, and trade. In each category, Trump’s approval is in the negative. The question is whether public perception matches the reality.
Inflated Inflation?
Consider the bugbear of President Joe Biden’s administration: inflation. It was a curse of his single term, with prices rising for just about every conceivable product and service. Indeed, the cumulative inflation rate from 2021 to 2024 is in the region of 22%; that’s a cost that is never going away. But what about inflation under Trump?
The latest figures pitch core inflation at just 2.7%, which beat all estimates and was a welcome Christmas gift to the administration and America. As LNN’s Economics Editor Andrew Moran put it, “One word could best describe the latest inflation report: Wow.” Despite the doomsaying over Trump’s tariffs and economic adventures, inflation dropped during the last year to what many would claim are desirable levels. And yet the public seems not to share this view.
According to the aggregate of polling, Trump has a -26.5% approval on his handling of inflation. Twenty-six points down with just over 2% inflation – no wonder the president is having night sweats. Contrast this with Biden, who, in 48 months in office, had only four months in which the inflation rate was lower than today (two of those were January and February 2021, so they probably belong in the Trump column). He suffered for it, too. His approval rating for handling inflation averages was -29%. But actual inflation is far more under control right now than it was then, so it seems that Trump just can’t get the message across.
And it appears he has a not-dissimilar problem with immigration.
Immigration Reversal
Under the last administration, illegal crossings hit record highs, and the border force was overwhelmed. Even former New York City Mayor Eric Adams began singing the pro-deportation tune when his city became overrun with illegal dependents. Yet the public was told nothing could really be done without Congress crafting major new laws – and, of course, the legislation proposed would still have allowed illegal entry of literally thousands of people per day. Trump rewrote the entire script.
Within months of retaking office, he changed illegal immigration from a flood to a trickle, and the detention and deportation of illegal alien criminals became a wave in itself. Between ICE deportations and voluntary self-deportation, more than 2.5 million immigrants left the United States – remember, these were all people who had either entered illegally or illegally overstayed. This should have been Trump’s crowning glory. But apparently not.
Polling gives Trump -4 points on his handling of illegal immigration. Unlike inflation approval, however, this figure seems to rise and fall between approval and disapproval. It raises the conundrum of whether the public is happy with less illegal immigration or not. Perhaps this fluctuation provides a clue as to Trump’s policy/polling paradox.
A Messaging Mess
Few but his most ardent critics would argue that second-term Trump is less focused than first-term Trump. He has spent the last year building a team of loyalists who each appear determined to deliver on the MAGA agenda. But he has also moved at breakneck speed from one problem to another.
Here’s the rub: If an administration moves from one major issue to another without fighting for the narrative win, the most persistent and pervasive narrative always prevails. First-term Trump spent enough time lauding his wins and arguing with the legacy press over reality that he ultimately came out on top in the areas that really mattered – well enough to win the White House again. This time around, though, Team Trump does not have the time, the energy, or even the stamina to solidify its wins.
Most presidents, including Trump in his first term, would have spent a month or more gloating over better-than-expected inflation reports and a third-quarter GDP expansion of 4.3% – these are the things legacies are made of and on which elections are won. By rushing from one project to another, the administration appears to be ceding narrative ground to its opponents, and this may be the likely culprit behind the dismal polling.
So, who is to blame?
Ultimately, if Trump is not getting the numbers he and the wider GOP need to put up a good fight in the upcoming midterms, he has only himself to blame. He has been the most transparent president in recent history, but if he fails to sell the results of his initiatives to the public, he really can’t complain that the average Joe and Jill are not buying it.
