Geoff Bennett:

A new poll shows what Americans think of President Trump and his policies, and it's not good news for the White House.

For more, we turn to our Politics Monday duo. That's Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

It's always great to see you both.

So, Amy, the latest PBS News/NPR/Marist poll shows a majority of Americans disapprove of the job that President Trump is doing, with a majority strongly disapproving.

How significant is the intensity of that opposition at this point in his term?

Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

Yes, well, we also took this new poll from PBS and made it -- put it into our Cook Political Report poll tracker, which is an aggregator of 21 national polls.

And what we found this week is that the president actually is at his lowest standing of his second term at this point. And it's really driven by some key constituents that have soured on him since he was first sworn in, Latino voters, younger voters, independent voters. Those were all critical to his success in 2024.

But the group that really is the most fascinating to me, and I think it's going to be really important as we watch these next few months go forward, are the voters that we always think of as his core constituencies, white working-class voters who have long been very much behind the president.

We're seeing some significant slippage there, both in the PBS poll and in The Cook Political Report aggregator. And these are the kinds of voters that, you could argue that the slippage is really driven by views on the economy, the frustration about inflation and the cost of living.

And when you look at the battleground states that are going to determine the makeup of the House, but especially the Senate, they run through places where white working-class voters make up a significant portion of the electorate.

Geoff Bennett:

And, Tam, say more about that, because President Trump expanded his coalition in 2024, but much of that expansion now appears to be slipping away. Of course, we don't know how enduring that is.

Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

Right.

Geoff Bennett:

But it's a snapshot in time.

Tamara Keith:

Right.

And the intensity of that disapproval is essentially back where it was right after the January 6 attack. So there -- riot. And so it's pretty dramatic and it's a challenge for him. And as you say, he had expanded the base. He didn't win because of the base. He won because of all of these other people, independent voters, young voters, Hispanic voters, as Amy's talking about.

On Air Force One over the weekend, we reporters asked him a lot of questions at one point. He said something about his base that I think really stands out. He is so focused on his base. And with his base, the narrow base, the titanium piece of the pie that he has had since the beginning, he has strength still.

And what he says is "My base has never been stronger. My base is me." And then let's put an ellipsis to get to the end of what he said. "You could call it the America first base. They couldn't be more thrilled."

And that is who he's playing to. And that is the very reason that he's losing these other sort of expansion voters that he had gotten. And those are -- the independent voters, these sort of expansion voters, these are the people who are going to decide the majorities in the House and the Senate.

Geoff Bennett:

It sounds like the president is trying to speak some support into existence?

Amy Walter:

Well, that's right. That's right.

Geoff Bennett:

This plays into a piece that you wrote about messaging.

Amy Walter:

Yes, which is, again, if you are starting to lose -- he's not doing worse with Republicans. But his approval rating among those white working-class voters definitely has shrunk. It's by about nine points since the beginning of last year.

And, again, the economy is a big driver of it. The president likes to say the economy is booming, everything's fine, inflation has been tamed, it's a hoax, this affordability thing that he's been hearing about in the press.

But if you're a Republican on the ballot next year, you can't afford that to be the message that affordability is not such a big deal. You want to talk about what you have done as a Republican to help tame that. Now, what Republicans are hoping is that, in these next few months here, as people filed their taxes, they're going to get some nice refunds.

And there are studies out there showing that Americans are going to get a bigger refund this year than they did in 2025. Are they going to remember that by the time November rolls around? That's a really big question mark over that.

And our voters going to feel -- this is the other frustration that they're having right now -- that the president is rightly focused on affordability, instead of being focused on a whole bunch of other things that don't seem to have to do much with bringing down the cost of stuff in their life?

Geoff Bennett:

Yes, so the president losing support on his handling of the economy. He's also losing support for issues like the posting of that racist meme on his social media accounts attacking the Obamas.

I raise this because you mentioned you were on Air Force One.

Tamara Keith:

Yes.

Geoff Bennett:

And after this program went off the air on Friday, the president all but admitted that it was he who posted that meme online after the White House initially denied wrongdoing and then blamed it on a staffer. Fill in the blanks.

Tamara Keith:

Yes, so the White House was calling this fake outrage. It wasn't fake outrage. There were many Republicans who came to the president and said, this is bad, you have got to remove it.

The fact that they removed it is an admission of something they almost never admit, which is that there was an error. This was a mistake. Now, President Trump, his response was, yes, I saw the beginning of the video, but I didn't see the end of the video and, really, he thought he was just posting what, based on viewing it, is an election denial conspiracy theory from the 2020 election.

But that's what he said he wanted to post. What he actually posted was that with this racist meme sort of embedded in it. And he said, though, he told his staff to put it out. He also said, there's no reason to apologize. In an answer to me, he said, no, he wasn't firing anyone. He said he didn't make a mistake.

And, in fact, he said he's the least racist president that we have had in a long time, which is quite a claim.

Geoff Bennett:

This would not be the first time where the White House seeks to clean up something for the president and then he undoes the cleanup job...

Amy Walter:

Right. Right.

Geoff Bennett:

... which speaks to this question of, if the White House comes up with messaging, how good is that messaging if the president can't stick to it?

Amy Walter:

Right. And there is -- they need him to stay on message for their own, but they also need him to be in front to keep the base motivated.

Geoff Bennett:

Amy Walter, Tamara Keith, always a pleasure.

Tamara Keith:

Thanks.

Amy Walter:

Thank you.

Source link