By Michael Woyton
Tuesday evening the grifter-in-chief will be standing in front of a joint session of Congress and will more than likely tell the United States and the rest of the world how great he thinks his return to the Oval Office has been.
Technically, the lie-fest speech will not be a state of the union — that is reserved for presidents who have been in office for more than a couple of months, according to an explainer article in USA Today.
Whatever you want to call the speech it will be filled with enough boasting, accusations and goals to keep CNN’s Daniel Dale busy on the factchecking desk.
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Ahead of the so-called state of the union address, a poll conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, in partnership with NPR and PBS News, interviewed U.S. adults to find out what they thought about how the second term of President Donald J. Felon is going.
The poll found that majorities of Americans do not think the union is strong, nor do they think it’s on the right track.
“About six weeks into his second term, President Trump’s swift actions have not garnered overwhelming support from Americans,” the Marist Poll said. “In fact, majorities believe the president is moving too quickly and think the cuts made to federal agencies will do more harm than good.”
When asked, 53 percent of Americans said the country was not very strong or not strong at all. That included 74 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of independents.
The remaining 47 percent — including 77 percent of Republicans — said the nation was very strong or strong.
Fewer Americans, according to Marist, said the state of the union is not very strong or not strong at all now compared to 62 percent in 2023.
Fifty-four percent of respondents believe the country is moving in the wrong direction, as opposed to 45 percent who said it is heading in the right direction. That is an improvement from December when 64 percent said the country was off track and 35 percent said it was going in the right direction.
A clear majority of Americans said the president has been rushing to make changes without considering the impact — 56 percent to 43 percent, according to the Marist Poll.
Almost the same breakdown of Americans — 55 percent to 45 percent — believe that staff and funding cuts to agencies of the federal government will do more harm than good.
Marist also found that the president’s approval rating is under water at this time. Only 45 percent approve of the job he is going, while 49 percent disapproval.
However, the president is doing better on the approval front than his mega-donor and head or not-the-head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Elon Musk.
Only 39 percent of residents have a favorable opinion of Musk, while 50 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Musk. The remaining 11 percent, according to Marist, are either unsure or have never heard of him.
Likewise, DOGE has a 44 percent unfavorable opinion and a 39 percent favorable opinion, with 17 percent unsure of how to rate it or having never heard of it.
The Marist/NPR/PBS News poll is a survey of U.S. residents over the age of 18 and was conducted from Feb. 24 through Feb. 26. Results are statistically significant within ±2.8 percentage points. The partisan breakdown among registered voters is 34 percent Democrat, 34 percent Republican and 31 percent independent.
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Good point.
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And Conan O’Brien gets the last word for today, from the Oscars broadcast:
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Lead art by Michael Woyton
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