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Each new morn, new widows howl, new orphans cry and Donald Trump passes a wild executive order. To liberally paraphrase Macbeth, every day seems to bring some new reason to scream into the void. The good news, however, is that even diehard Trumpers seem to be getting sick of all the chaos. A month into Trump’s second act, there are signs that the honeymoon is over and a backlash may be brewing. For certain Republican voters, regret may be setting in.
First, the polling. A Harvard CAPS/Harris survey published on Monday gave Trump a 52% approval rating. Meanwhile, three national polls show a decline in support for the president, with most Americans saying he hasn’t done enough to lower prices and has overstepped his presidential powers. A CNN poll published on Thursday found that 47% of Americans approve of Trump’s performance while 52% disapprove – and the numbers are trending downwards.
There are also signs of growing disillusionment at town halls across the country. Various outlets have reported recently that Republicans holding community events are facing hostile crowds, angry about the mass firing of government workers that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is carrying out. Disgruntled voters are also venting online: social media is full of viral posts from Trumpers who have been caught in Musk’s bloodbath or whose family members have been fired. These posts haven’t garnered much sympathy, I should add. Rather, there have been a lot of references to the Leopards Eating People’s Faces party meme.
Is Trump in trouble? Judging by the number of headlines centred on the president’s problems – along with the plummeting popularity rates of his mate Musk – a lot of people sure hope so. Some Democrats are already rubbing their hands together in glee and prophesying that the Trump ship is about to go down. On Sunday, for example, the Democratic strategist James Carville, who helped Bill Clinton win in 1992, told Mediaite that he reckons the Trump White House will suffer a “massive collapse” in “less than 30 days”.
While this is certainly a tantalising prospect – and one that has had a lot of airtime on liberal cable news – I wouldn’t get too excited. These days, being a “Democratic strategist” tends to mean that everything you say will immediately be proved dramatically wrong. In fact, it’s probably best not to get too excited by any of the chatter around the Trump slump. As we all know, the 78-year-old president is the ultimate comeback kid. A few middling poll numbers and angry town halls are nothing for a guy who has shrugged off being found liable for sexual abuse and who was charged with 88 felony counts across four criminal cases.
Trump is certainly taking all this bad press in his stride – by which I mean he has been busy posting on social media that he is the best president the world has ever seen and everyone loves him. On Friday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he has “the best polling numbers I’ve ever had”. He added: “The Democrats, run by broken down losers like James Carville, whose [sic] weak of mind and body, are going crazy, and just don’t know what to do. They have lost their confidence and spirit – They have lost their minds!”
Trump isn’t entirely wrong. Along with many other people, I am losing my mind – at the constant stream of inanity, cruelty and straight-up illegal nonsense coming out of Washington. One of the latest examples is Trump referring to himself as a “king” and boasting that he might stay in the Oval Office after his second term ends in 2028. There is a reason so many people are hyping up reports that Trump is losing popularity: I think it’s what the extremely online call “copium” and what others call “desperately clutching at straws”.
Still, here is a straw for us all to clutch: while Trump may have an uncanny ability to bounce back from scandals and bad press, he is not a king and he is certainly not a god. He is still a mere mortal – and he is digging himself into a hole out of which even he may not be able to clamber. Consumer sentiment has slumped while prices continue to rise. Trump campaigned relentlessly on the cost of living and made a big (and unrealistic) promise to bring down food prices on day one of his term. Now, it’s clear he has no realistic plan to lower the cost of groceries; eventually, even his most devoted followers are going to figure out that you can’t eat the culture wars. To riff on Macbeth again: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten the astronomical price of eggs.
