By Michael Woyton
“The fact that Trump’s proposals are unpopular even with his base underscores just how unpopular these measures are.”
That quote, which was included in a press release from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, jumped out at me as I read the results of a poll by UMass on the sinking approval ratings for president donald j. felon*.
The national poll that was conducted by YouGov was a survey of 1,000 people taken between March 20 and March 25.
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While I’m sure that within the walls of the White House and the Orange Motel-a-Lago it is being called fake news, it shows that the grifter-in-chief’s greatest hits are becoming more and more unpopular.
Overall, the poll said that the president’s approval rating has fallen to 33 percent, which is the lowest rating of his second term in office, with 62 percent of respondents disapproving.
More telling, the adjudicated rapist’s 33 percent approval rating is down five points from July and 11 from April.
Those poll numbers were called “brutal” by Jesse Rhodes, professor of political science at UMass Amherst and co-director of the poll.
The reason for the high disapproval rating, Rhodes said, is because “Americans grade Trump harshly on the most prominent issues facing the country, especially on bread-and-butter economic issues.”
He said 71 percent thought the president is not handling inflation well and 61 percent said he’s not handling the issue of jobs well.
Tariffs, which were supposed to be one of the elderly golfer’s signature issues, has become a public relations disaster, Rhodes said, with almost two out of three Americans giving him a negative grade.
“When it comes to public opinion,” he said, “economic concerns usually dominate, and Americans’ harshly negative views of Trump’s economic leadership are a major cause of his declining poll numbers.”
But wait it gets worse, for the donald.
The issues that he campaigned on — inflation, jobs and immigration — all show seriously slippage from April of last year.
The poll’s respondents disapproved of the president’s handling of inflation by 71 percent, down from 62 percent in April.
For jobs, he’s down to 61 percent now from 53 percent in April.
The con-artist-in-chief hammered away on immigration during the campaign but he’s obviously not handling the reality of immigration well — or at least Stephen Miller isn’t.
The UMass poll found that only 35 percent of Americans thought the issue of immigration was being handled well. Sixty percent disapproved.
Those numbers show him seriously underwater now, while in April, 50 percent approved and 46 percent did not.
Tatishe Nteta, UMass Amherst’s provost professor of political science and director of the poll, called the reversal in approval of immigration policy “dramatic.”
“In the face of these poll results, Trump may have to reconsider his campaign promise to conduct the ‘largest deportation program in American history’ or risk alienating a public increasingly weary of his harsh solutions to the problem of undocumented immigration.”
And what about the illegal war against Iran for which the president neither sought approval from Congress, the public or our allies nor even explained his rationale?
Nearly two-thirds — or 63 percent — of Americans said the president is handling Iran poorly, including 52 percent who said he’s not handling it well at all.
That certainly appears to create a weak foundation for any attempt to escalate the war, according to Raymond La Raja, UMass Amherst political science director and co-director of the poll.
He said the views are sharply polarized, with staunch MAGA supporters firmly in the president’s corner.
“[B]ut that support drops sharply among other Trump voters,” La Raja said, “revealing a clear divide within the Republican coalition,” suggesting potential cracks beneath the surface.
Complete poll results and methodology can be found through this link. The margin of error for the poll is ±3.5 percent.
As bad as the numbers in this poll appear, they certainly seem to jibe with the estimated turnout of 8 million for the nationwide No Kings rallies Saturday.
One can only wonder if there will be some “potential cracks” showing up with those in Congress on the right who can actually interpret public sentiment and might actually fear for their future prospects in office.
The golfer-in-chief isn’t going to be around forever.
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* I’m following what the wannabe king declared on social media that he will only refer to the Supreme Court in lowercase because he has a complete lack of respect for them after the illegal tariffs ruling.
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Lead art: screen grab from WCVB Channel 5 Boston via YouTube.
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