What The Hell America!

This is a shocking slide, and Trump seems to know it: He mused on Monday about launching criminal prosecutions against pollsters. But Trump’s chances of bouncing back are remarkably slim. That 23 percent of NPR respondents who gave him an “A” may very well represent his floor. If things continue on this trajectory, his approval rating may very well fall to that number, making him the least popular president in the country’s history.

In the very best scenario—for Trump, at least— “Liberation Day” would be analogous to what the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan did to Joe Biden’s popularity. After that debacle, Biden’s popularity rapidly slid and never recovered. Americans may have wanted to leave Afghanistan, but they clearly had expectations that we would not leave the country in the Taliban’s hands and strand many Afghans who had aided the American occupation. The fallout (and the relentlessly negative media coverage) led to the impression that Biden was weak, infirm, and incapable of leading—a perception that would ultimately not only doom his presidency, but the Democrats’ hopes of holding onto the White House.

“Liberation Day” seems to have woken a lot of Americans up to something they had inexplicably forgotten: Trump is the same profoundly incompetent and stupid person who, just a few years ago, they did not like very much. Trump may be counting on his trade war somehow working, but much would have to go right for his popularity to recover. For one, that trade war would have to deliver what Trump promises it will: mass prosperity, an end to the income tax, and the return of well-paying manufacturing jobs—which pretty much everyone, aside from Trump and a handful of slavish loyalists, agrees is impossible. He would also have to somehow turn back time and restore the pre-Covid economy that many Americans remembered so fondly when they voted for him a second time. This is also impossible. He would probably also have to end the war in Ukraine—but in a way that doesn’t give Russia everything it wants, which is Trump’s current, and truly artless, negotiating position—and somehow repair America’s absolutely destroyed global reputation. None of that is going to happen, either.