Transcription
So, the new p new CNN polling out this week shows that President Trump has hit some historic lows underwater on just about everything. His overall approval rating has slipped to 34%, matching his career low, which came just after January 6th, which has led, uh, to a question now being asked, which is where exactly is the floor for the president's polling? CNN's Harry Anon running the numbers for you on this one. What do these polls say about the president? Yeah, is there a bottom? And to me, it does not appear that there is a bottom. Trump is heading towards an electoral black hole. I feel like this is like one of those m magicians tricks, right? Where the floor just falls out underneath beneath you. And that is exactly what is happening with President Trump. Kate off on the side laughing there. Trump's approval hits record term two lows all out this week. You know, you mentioned the CNN poll, 34%. You think that's all? How about AP North 33%? You think that's all? How about Quinnipiac University 32%? So you look at and you get three different pollsters all saying that Trump is hitting term two lows this week. In fact, Quinnipiac, I believe that is an all-time low for him. And the CNN poll, as you were mentioning, Kate, that is tied for an all-time low for him. So is there a bottom? It does not appear to be to me that there is a bottom for President Trump.
Put compare this to history for me, please. Yeah. Okay. So we'll compare it to history. Let's compare it to the other presidents who got a term two in the 21st century. You could see it right here. And I'm averaging CNN, Quinnipiac, and the AP. Look at this approval. 21st century presidents at this point in term two. You average them out. You average out CNN, Quinnipiac, AP, you get 33% for Trump. Obama wasn't too hot to drop, but he was at least at 41%. How about George W. Bush? The Iraq war was raging on back then during the 2006 electoral cycle. He was still at 38%. Trump is at the lowest of any president at this point in term two for a 21st century president. You have to go all the way back to Richard Nixon to find a lower approval rating at this point in the term two. And of course, Richard Nixon was resigning in about a few weeks at this point in 1974. Not the comparison you want to be making if you're Donald John Trump.
What is behind his historic low? What's driving it so low? Yeah. What is driving it so low? Well, what was the reason that President Trump got a second term in the White House? It's the economy. We just keep going back to the economy. I feel, you know, like we're we're we're we're on antenna TV. We're playing back the oldies, playing back the repeats. Economic approval. Okay, take a look here. Where's President Trump at this point in term two? Just 30%. Just 30% approve of the job he's doing on the economy. Obama was at 38%. George W. Bush was at 38%. These guys were doing terribly, but he's doing terrible, terrible, terrible. You know, I'm trying to do my best Charles Barkley here. I can't really do it this early in the morning, but it's just absolutely awful at this point. No wonder President Trump is at historic lows for a term two president this point and matching, if not exceeding, his term two low already. It's simply because people are not pleased with the economy and when you're not pleased with the economy, you get the good old-fashioned boot as far as the American people are concerned. And we will see less than 100 days away. It's good to see you. Thank you. Well, I mean, not [clears throat] a little while for him, but moving on.
We all know we all know the intention. Okay, the Republicans are kind of making the same mistake right now that I saw the Kamala Harris campaign make in 2024, where they kind of ignored the economic pain that so many Americans are feeling right now. Um, and you know, things haven't improved a whole lot. And I will say, you know, I come from America's heartland. I come from the middle of the country from Kansas City. And, uh, I have tons of people in my family and friends that were lifelong Democrats and then switched when Donald Trump came along. And many of them are telling me right now that they're disappointed actually in the direction of the country. But at the same time, they are not necessarily liking Democrats. And so I would say that Democrats, you know, like this is obviously a good sign for them. But I wouldn't get too optimistic because there's still some fundamental things that they need to address. Don't don't ever get optimistic about Democrats. [laughter] We we have we are notorious awful Democrats. We are notorious about about ripping u ripping defeat out of the jaws of victory. Look, there there are a couple of things that that you hit the nail on the head about. Like the first is Donald Trump is notoriously weak on on across the board. The economy hasn't gotten any better. There's some notorious blunders you can point at like Iran. People don't know why we're still there today. We just saw the expansion of the war in Egypt. You see these headlines every single day. We're talking about anti-weaponization. We're talking about infighting. But at the end of the day, vers the the the my criticism to my own party is that we have not developed a clear enough message answering one question, which is what are you going to do tangibly for the American people if we give you the reigns of power? I have not heard a Keem Jeff answer that question and it drives me nuts for we can no longer simply say that we are not the party of Donald Trump because you know why people apparently don't give a damn, right? They just don't care. [laughter] They want to make sure that they can afford their groceries and utility.
Very reason that, um, that the candidates that are willing to sort of put things on the table that some of the establishment might think are outlandish or whatever are the ones getting the most attention because at least they're saying, "Oh, we're going to do something. We're going to do X, Y, and Z." Did not say that it was good. I'm just saying. [laughter] Saying if if there is a choice between vagaries and specificity, voters are actually kind of in some cases gravitating toward the candidates who are being pretty specific about what they want to change. Yeah. And that's atypical cuz you would typically want as a candidate to paint a black blank canvas and then allow voters to paint whatever their desires would be on top of it. What Democrats are advant are benefiting from right now is that their base is just very enthusiastic to vote. Republicans less so. You can expect that to change as we get closer to October. And there are a lot of opportunities on the table. Oh, because Republican voters will engage with the election. All voters will engage. Always it always get tightens up as we get closer into the fall. It's it's unwise to judge the election based on summer polling when people aren't necessarily tuned into the races. They will. And it'll be a good year for Democrats. Democrats are going to be more enthusiastic than Republican voters are. They don't have as much to vote on. However, a competent political operation can channel that economic message. You're absolutely right. That's what they want to talk about and say listen to what these Democratic candidates are proposing and what that's going to do to your wallet.
Well, and the ones who who are actually doing that, I mean, looking at the CNN poll, only 34% say Democrats are the party that cares about the people, people like you. When you look at the favorabilities, 30% favor. We have the graphic, so let me put it up because it's also worth it's important to put up the full thing cuz 34% say the Democrats are the party that cares about you. That's compared to 25% that say the same about Republicans. So they have a almost 10-point advantage. Um, there's party fighting corruption. They're almost evenly matched there. Party that gets things done. This is the issue that I think we're talking about here. Republicans [snorts] have an eight-point advantage. The party of extremism. Republicans by 10 points. That's actually Well, here's the thing. In the in the in the Democratic Socialist of America environment, that's kind of surprising that Americans are Not even it's not even that's like the least close one also says the caveat the caveat I have to give about CNN polls or Emerson polls or whomever is polling is that at the end of the day it's about candidates and one of the things that midterm elections have shown is that Republicans usually choose some candidates that have warts beyond belief right I mean we go back to Roy Moors of the world, we go back to uh Todd Akens of the world, right? Or what's the woman who was not a witch? [laughter] Katherine O'Donnell, right? But I mean, and on the flip side, this year, that was a time. That [laughter] was a time. That was a time. Um, but this year you have people like like John Oaf. You have um, uh, you have in North Carolina, the former governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper. You actually have Josh Turk in Iowa. You have Sherid Brown who were not out of touch with mainstream, who are talking about the issues that you're talking about. So when it when it drills down to candidates, I do think that we've done a good job across the board, even in some House races, of getting very good candidates irrespective of what the national mood may play.
But what is the model that you just described, the Todd Aken model, the nationalize the race model? It is to make that that guy emblematic of the party and compel all these other nominees who have nothing to do with them to get on the record about that guy. That is what a competent political operation could do with Dariel Eliza Shioalier, with um, uh, El Say in Michigan, half a dozen in Milas Kirros, who said that we deserve 911 in Colorado, half a dozen others I can think of, and that was that is available to them. Also Joe Biden's popularity at this point in 2022 was pretty much where Donald Trump says, and yet Republicans didn't really benefit from a wave election because their candidate selection also history tells us Democrats decision, but the question is by how much and that's really when it plays is the biggest role is who's actually getting elected on the Democrat side.
On the one of the interesting findings of this poll, they asked, um, Democrats, do you identify as a socialist, a democratic socialist? 34% said yes. Yeah, that's a lot. That's a lot. And it doesn't surprise me. I think over the last 10 years, you know, there were people that I knew working in Democratic politics that ardently supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 and have now swung way to the left and are, you know, now telling me that they're behind people like Abdul Alsed. And I think the base has actually radicalized in a more far-left direction. I don't think that's a good thing. [laughter] Just so you guys know. Well, I think it's actually like, you know, the the establishment Democrats kind of lost the trust of people in my family, right? Because they weren't able to economically deliver. It was sort of just pushing the status quo. Although Barack Obama did give me healthcare and so I'm really grateful for that and I will always be because I have a lung disease similar to to cystic fibrosis. However, other than that, there wasn't a lot of like big transformation. And so, the progressives are coming along and they're promising that, but they also come with all of this sort of like far-left cultural and social baggage that is not appealing at all to the working class of this country. And I think could drive an either bigger wedge between Democrats and people like my family. You also have to look at who is really the core base of the democratic socialist and it tends to be elite white people now, college educated, college educated, college. And that is one of the biggest problems the Democrats have actually is that it's this education polarization. You know, like it used to be that non-educated people voted for Democrats and now there has been this realignment.
Well, and a couple interesting things about that. I mean, two things. One, I mean, the yes, the educational polarization has been driven. I would argue actually it was more driven by Donald Trump pulling non-college educated whites toward him. But he is suffering with that constituency right now. He that's his that's his base and they're moving away from him. I also think Zoron Mani is an interesting example of this because look at the this favorability number. He is the most popular Democrat among Democrats right now, right? By a lot. It was like something like but I mean in comparison to everyone else, in comparison to everyone else. And and then when you look a little deeper into the numbers, there was some skepticism of him among voters of color, but that has shifted. He is has net favorability among well voters of color in the Democratic party right now. So there there are shifts that that can happen in our house certainly. And I think look, I mean, Trump has a higher favorability than Mamani and Mdani is being celebrated as having this high favorability at 30%. It's they're just really, really low numbers. I will say cuz I was I don't know if I'm shocked by the number of people who identify as socialist. I will say I don't think they know what that means in the context of the party itself. Problem is also not even they don't they may not even care. [laughter] The problem is more because the people that they're voting for do believe the crazy stuff and then they get into power and then they harm the Democrats long first of all, they have to win, which is the danger that we're facing in in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race and in Michigan, that that makes people uneasy. But Democrats have actually set up a realignment, kind of getting back to the base because the primary comes through South Carolina, which means that my mom and her friends, they're not voting for Zoron Mandani, they're not voting for AOC. They know that. Then you have Virginia, which you have a a good bit of college educated white voters. And then you have Michigan, where you have working-class voters that we're talking about. So, you know, and this is I remind people all the time, Bernie Sanders did not farewell in the Democratic primary and people will have all of these other reasons in the South. First of all, first of all, Hillary Clint Hillary Clinton beat him by 4 million votes against a little fair to say that he didn't perform well in the primary. He was the runner up in and there were people in my family who wanted Bernie to win and then when he lost they ended up going for. So I mean it's a real I don't think that it's totally true to say that it's it's geographic. The geography of the primary matters. The geography of the party matters and the Democratic party has to do this.