Tag: media
Trump Approval Crater Gets Deeper, Even On Immigration

Trump Approval Crater Gets Deeper, Even On Immigration

President Donald Trump's approval ratings appear to be plummeting because his voters are concerned about his approach of governance. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday revealed that only 37 percent of Americans agree with the way the president is handling the economy. This is the lowest rating he has ever received, dating back to the beginning of his first presidential term.

Axios highlighted three polls in a report Thursday, noting, "On the economy, the single most decisive issue of the 2024 election, Trump's polling has never been worse."

Gallup polling released this week also painted a bleak picture for the administration. For the first time since at least 2001, most Americans feel that their economic circumstances are deteriorating.

Another survey conducted by the Pew Research Center revealed that Trump's overall approval rating has decreased to 40 percent, and his economic leadership approval has declined to 45 percent — the lowest levels recorded since tracking started in 2019.

"Trump's approval rating is cratering not because voters reject his goals — but because they're increasingly alarmed by his methods," Axios noted.

The report also highlighted an average of polls by data journalist G. Elliott Morris, which found Trump is not polling great even on immigration, which is considered his best issue.

"Trump is now almost underwater on approval of his handling of immigration, widely regarded as his strongest issue — and 20+ points negative on inflation. In 3 short months, he has completely lost his advantage on both the issues voters elected him to fix," Morris wrote Wednesday on the social platform X.

50 percent of the YouGov survey participants indicated that Trump should bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an immigrant from Maryland who was wrongly deported to El Salvador, back to the United States. Only 28 percent believed he should not be allowed to return.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Rupert Murdoch

Declining Polls On Fox News Enrage President

President Donald Trump has never liked when pollsters say he’s doing worse than he thinks he is. But now he’s escalating his war on polls and the press, suggesting that even right-wing media outlets should scrap their polling arms if the results don’t flatter him.

According to a Fox News poll released Wednesday, Trump’s approval rating is officially lower than it was during his first term, just as he approaches the 100-day mark of his second term.

The survey found his rating underwater at 44% approval and 55% disapproval—down five points from the previous month. Even worse, Trump’s 100-day rating lags behind Joe Biden’s (54%), Barack Obama’s (62%), and George W. Bush’s (63%) at the same point in their presidencies.

Even Republicans aren’t exactly brimming with optimism. Just 38% of voters overall—and 75% of Republicans—say they’re “encouraged” about the next four years. That’s a drop from his first term in 2017, which showed 45% and 84%, respectively.

The same poll gave Trump poor marks across the board—on the economy, foreign policy, guns, immigration, you name it. His economic approval in particular sank to a record low at 38%, with 55% of respondents saying conditions are getting worse for their families.

So how did Trump respond to this news? By calling for Fox News to kill its polling unit.

“Rupert Murdoch has told me for years that he is going to get rid of his FoxNews, Trump Hating, Fake Pollster, but he has never done so. This ‘pollster’ has gotten me, and MAGA, wrong for years. Also, and while he’s at it, he should start making changes at the China Loving Wall Street Journal. It sucks!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday.

Of course, this isn’t some isolated poll. An April Ipsos survey for Reuters put Trump’s approval at just 42%, with only 37% backing his handling of the economy. A new Pew Research Center poll had him even lower, at 40%, with negative ratings across every major policy area. And a YouGov poll for The Economist wasn’t any better, with Trump clocking in at 41% approval, with every issue underwater there, too.

In other words: reality bites. But rather than face it, Trump’s trying to pressure outlets like Fox News and The Wall Street Journal into becoming full-time propaganda machines.

His push to kill off Fox’s polling arm is especially alarming given that it routinely produces some of the highest-quality polling in the business. If Fox caves, it would be a scandal—but not entirely shocking. Media executives have buckled to Trump before, afraid of the blowback if they don’t stay in his good graces.

Trump’s already suing CBS News’ “60 Minutes” for $10 billion, and he’s gone after ABC News, which recently settled a defamation suit and agreed to pay $15 million to Trump’s future presidential library. The Washington Post has also drifted rightward under Trump, winning plaudits from the administration for its “balance.”

And while polling isn’t perfect, Trump has a habit of going after those who publish anything he doesn’t like.

In December, he suedThe Des Moines Register and veteran pollster Ann Selzer for a pre-election poll showing Vice President Kamala Harris leading him in Iowa. Trump ended up winning the state by more than 13 points, and now he’s trying to make it a courtroom issue.

Trump’s latest tantrum makes his vision clear: Any outlet that doesn’t treat him like a demigod should be silenced, sued, or shut down. What he’s building isn’t just a cult of personality; it’s a MAGA-approved echo chamber where the “truth” is whatever he says it is.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy's Latest Cuts To Food Safety Could Make America Very Sick

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is continuing his life’s work of making public health more precarious as the Food and Drug Administration, which he oversees, is suspending its quality-control testing of raw fluid milk and other dairy products due to budget cuts, according to Reuters.

The suspension of testing begins this week and includes Grade “A” raw milk and other finished dairy products. Grade “A” is the nation’s highest sanitary standard for milk, making sure it does not contain harmful pathogens.

According to a spokesperson, the FDA's Moffett Center Proficiency Testing Laboratory, which conducts such food safety testing, has been “decommissioned.” That, along with massive Trump administration budget cuts, has left the FDA "no longer able to provide laboratory support for proficiency testing and data analysis,” according to an internal email obtained by Reuters.

This news follows the suspension of programs focused on bird flu outbreaks, which included studies showing how pasteurized milk can kill the virus, after Kennedy fired senior veterinarians designing them.

In his quest to fund tax for the wealthy, President Donald Trump’s administration demanded that the HHS, which includes the FDA, cut $40 billion from its budget. Since January, HHS has lost an estimated 20,000 positions in its workforce.

Kennedy has long been a proponent of raw milk, claiming it is superior to pasteurized dairy products, though the FDA has thoroughly documented raw milk’s dangers.

It remains unclear whether Kennedy will be able to slap together a replacement testing program, like the one at the now-closed Moffett Center Proficiency Testing Laboratory. Like many of the government agencies decimated by Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the scramble to rehire essential employees seems to have become a weekly crisis.

As Trump continues to pretend that he has conquered soaring egg prices, which are still largely driven by one of the worst outbreaks of avian flu in U.S. history, his budget cuts and the decision to have Kennedy run public health leave no clear end in sight.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

'Sudden Stop': A Trump-Branded Crisis Hits US Economy (And Dollar)

'Sudden Stop': A Trump-Branded Crisis Hits US Economy (And Dollar)

Bloomberg posted an article titled “Markets Are Discovering the Real Trump Trade Is ‘Sell America’.” That’s about right. Look at the value of the dollar on international markets, shown at the top of this post. For a while after the election investors loved Trump, not wisely but too well. But in the face of one idiotic policy move after another, they’ve gradually fallen out of love, and now seem to be capitulating. I think they still haven’t faced up to how bad it is, but they’re figuring it out.

What we’re seeing now is something familiar to those of us who have studied economic crises in other countries, usually but not always emerging markets. For this is looking more and more like a “sudden stop.” That’s what happens when a country that has relied on large inflows of foreign capital loses the confidence of international investors. The inflow of money dries up — and the economic consequences are usually ugly.

Trump inherited an economy in remarkably good shape. We’d had “immaculate disinflation”: The inflation spike of 2021-22, largely caused by Covid-related supply chain disruptions, had faded away without a large rise in unemployment:


Source: St. Louis Federal Reserve

But Trump wasted no time in squandering the hand he’d been given. It’s not just the destructive tariffs. It’s also the chaos, as policy zigzags wildly, and the craziness. If you were a foreign investor, would you want to bet on America right now? Would you even want to visit to look at investment prospects, given the risk that you might be imprisoned by ICE because you once sent a text critical of Trump?

The economic consequences of sudden stops are, as I said, usually ugly. I’m writing this from Portugal, which — along with other southern European nations — was hit by a sudden stop in capital inflows just as it was recovering from the global financial crisis of 2008. The result was another severe economic slump that produced immense misery:


Can the United States suffer comparably? We have some big structural advantages that, say, Portugal in 2011 or Argentina in 2001 lacked. Above all, America’s foreign debt is overwhelmingly in dollars. This means that a plunging dollar won’t cause the domestic-currency value of our debt to explode, the way it typically does in emerging-market crises. And U.S. businesses and individuals have large overseas investments that will become more valuable in dollar terms as the dollar falls. As a result, the Trump slump in the dollar will, at least temporarily, lead to an improvement in our international investment position, the difference between U.S. assets and liabilities.

On the other hand, Portugal in 2011 or even Argentina in 2001 had mostly sane leadership. We don’t. As a number of people have pointed out, there may be no other government in the world that would have kept Pete Hegseth in office given his performance so far.

And as things get worse, there’s no reason at all to believe that Trump and those around him will look for policy solutions. Instead, we’ll see a combination of denial and efforts to blame someone else. Trump has already declared that reports of rising prices are “fake news.” And he’s already setting the stage for making Jerome Powell — “Mr. Too Late” and “a major loser” — his scapegoat for everything that goes wrong.

Coming next are conspiracy theories.

[Screengrab may have been fake?]

None of this was necessary. The U.S. economy was doing well before Trump came into office. Trumponomics isn’t a response to real problems. It’s a president who has waged a war on competence indulging his personal obsessions.

But America and the world will suffer the consequences.

Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist and former professor at MIT and Princeton who now teaches at the City University of New York's Graduate Center. From 2000 to 2024, he wrote a column for The New York Times. Please consider subscribing to his Substack, where he now posts almost every day.

Reprinted with permission from Paul Krugman.

Reprinted with permission from Substack.

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