‘This Is Less Like Governing and More Like a Really Nauseating Amusement Park Ride’: 3 Writers on Trump 2.0

Opinion|‘This Is Less Like Governing and More Like a Really Nauseating Amusement Park Ride’: 3 Writers on Trump 2.0

Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with Kristen Soltis Anderson, a contributing Opinion writer and Republican pollster, and Nate Silver, the author of “On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything” and the newsletter Silver Bulletin, to explore what polls say about the opening months of President Trump’s action-filled second term.

Frank Bruni: Kristen, Nate, thanks for joining me and helping readers and me understand Americans’ reviews of Donald Trump’s presidency so far. I’m confused, but that’s pretty much my default setting. As Trump approached 100 days, he saw a steep decline in his approval rating, with numbers unusually low for an American president in his first months. But they were still within the normal range for Trump — despite the autocratic orders, the tariff roulette, Elon Musk. And then, over the past two weeks, an uptick, so that the average of recent polls gives Trump an approval-disapproval split of about 45 percent to 51 percent. All said, should he and his allies be panicked, mildly concerned or vaguely reassured by the whole of it and by where he is now?

Kristen Soltis Anderson: We are living in an era when things like job approval are just not able to rise to the heights of previous decades, so 40 percent is the new 50 percent. The ceiling for these numbers is lower than it used to be. That said, I would be concerned about some of the softness I am seeing in numbers around areas like the economy that used to be real strengths for Trump.

Nate Silver: They should recognize that Trump can’t escape political gravity. Most presidents see their approval ratings decline early in their terms, but according to our tracking, Trump’s numbers had a particularly steep decline in April, falling late in the month to about a –9 net approval rating from about a –3 at the start of the month. To put that in more concrete terms, just shy of 10 percent of people who voted for Trump now seem to have regrets, according to the latest Times/Siena poll.

Trump’s numbers have rebounded just a bit. You can pretty clearly attribute most of this to the tariffs, which also produced some of the lowest consumer confidence numbers since the 2008 recession. Trump has somewhat backed off the tariffs, the hard economic data hasn’t been as bad as consumer attitudes, and the stock market has rebounded. If I were his aides, I’d be concerned, but I don’t think he’s in a death spiral yet.

Bruni: Fair, though at times, it really does seem like the presidential equivalent of playing with matches. When I asked you two about his approval numbers and how he was faring, both of you immediately went to the economy. Nate, your site breaks down Trump’s performance on various issues. On the economy, it showed that the percentage of Americans who disapproved of Trump’s economic performance was 13 points higher than the percentage who approved of it. On trade, he was more than 15 points underwater, as they say. On inflation, almost 27 points.