Donald Trump loves superlatives about himself, even if he has to make them up. But here’s one he can claim as all his own: No president in modern history has ever been as unpopular as he has this early in his term.

That includes the previous title holder: Donald Trump, in his first term.

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“Donald Trump is on a planet all by himself.”

Trump’s polling numbers are dropping like a rock at a time when he should be enjoying a honeymoon with voters. As he nears his first 100 days in office, approval numbers for Trump – never great to begin with – range from the bad to the dismal. At the top end are results from Rasmussen, notorious for its Republican bent, which show that only 47% of those polled approved of Trump. More reliable polls put the number significantly lower: 42% for a New York Times/Siena College poll and 39% in a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.

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It’s Trump’s own fault, of course. His reckless disregard for the law and the economy has led voters to broadly reject his behavior. Nearly two-thirds of voters in the New York Times poll described his second term as “chaotic,” and 59% said it was “scary.”

More to the point, voters specifically disapprove of Trump’s handling of the two biggest issues of his presidential campaign: the economy and immigration. A whopping 61% of those in the Ipsos poll disapprove of his handling of the economy, and 53% disapprove of how he is handling immigration. Even his attacks on DEI are falling flat: More than half of those in the poll said Trump was going too far.

As for Trump’s attacks on gender identity, they do get approval from 51% of voters in a CNN poll. But that’s because 90% of Republicans just love the administration’s transphobic agenda. In every other non-MAGA group – Democrats, moderates, independents – a majority of voters disapprove, sometimes by huge margins.

Twitter people are talking about the CNN poll showing that people "approve" of Trump's handling of gender identity. Turns out though when you look at the crosstabs, Democrats and Independents do not approve of Trump's handling of trans issues. But Republicans absolutely love it.

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— Erin Reed (@erininthemorning.com) April 27, 2025 at 5:19 PM

If voters are fed up with Trump now, just wait a few more weeks. The full effects of Trump‘s stupendously stupid tariffs have yet to be felt. But they’re coming. The port of Seattle should be bustling with ships, but it’s eerily quiet now. The ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles are expecting a 44% decrease in traffic because ships aren’t coming from China. That means it won’t be long before consumers start to see shortages in stores. Even if some agreement is reached with China, it will take months before things return to normal. By then, some businesses that depend upon imports from China will have had to close.

But the even bigger problem is that Trump never admits he’s wrong, let alone ignorant. He can’t stomach looking weak. There’s no easy way for him to climb down from the limb that he’s put the nation on and still save face. Worse still, China sees an advantage in diminishing U.S. power, and it has the resources to let Trump (and Americans) suffer the consequences of Trump‘s tariffs.

Because he’s surrounded himself with sycophants, no one will bluntly tell Trump that if he were a television show, he’d be canceled due to falling ratings. Trump will always imagine himself to be brilliant.

But the other factor at work is that the Project 2025 crowd isn’t perturbed by short-term dissatisfaction. They are playing a long game. Russell Vought, the co-author of Project 2025 and now Trump‘s budget chief, believes we’re engaged in a revolution to “renew a consensus of America as a nation under God.”

If you’re a Christian nationalist like Vought, you know change isn’t going to come overnight. But like Trump, Vought is convinced he’s absolutely right. So getting blowback for doing unpopular, if not illegal, things isn’t about to stop him. After all, he is convinced God is on his side. Plus, a lot of Vought’s goals are still being achieved, even if people hate them.

Faced with such ego and fanaticism, the country is likely to keep seeing more bad news for a long time. The question is whether Trump can become so unpopular that the proverbial GOP rats in Congress start abandoning the yacht. Even if they do, at this point Democrats can count on picking up lots of votes. But the Democrats don’t fare well in polls either. The country is stuck between cruelty laced with incompetence and weakness with no direction.

It will take a massive reconsideration of our political establishment to get out of this mess.

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