Trump's claims of prosperity are falling upon deaf ears

As the US mid-term elections loom, Trump's faltering approval ratings could spell disaster for the Republicans, writes Marion McKeone

US president Donald Trump's overall approval ratings is languishing between 36%-40%. Over 70% see him as 'out of touch' with voters' concerns. Picture: Kenny Holston/The New York Times via AP

Things are looking bleak for US president Donald Trump. 

There’s the looming prospect of a war with Iran that not even his most hardcore Make America Great Again (Maga) supporters want, the corrosive drip, drip of devastating details from the Epstein files continues apace, and the economy remains stubbornly at odds with his claims of a new golden age of prosperity.

This combination, together with the pervasive miasma of graft that envelopes the White House, has led to a queasy feeling among a growing number of American voters, which is reflected in a recent slew of damning polls.

Nonpartisan organisations such as Pew Research, Ipsos, and Marist have conducted wide-ranging surveys in conjunction with ABC News, The Washington Post, Reuters, NPR, and PBS over the past 10 days. Each of them says more or less the same thing: Trump’s approval ratings on a wide range of issues are on a steady downward trajectory.

Eight months before the November mid-terms, his overall approval is languishing between the 36-40%. More than two-thirds of Americans disapprove of his handling of the economy, and around 70% see him as ‘out of touch’ with voters’ concerns. 

At this point in previous election cycles, similar polls presaged a hammering in the mid-terms.

In February 2018, for example, Trump’s approval rating likewise lurched between 36% and 40%. Eight months later, Republicans lost a staggering 40 seats in Congress.

Detached from the Maga base

Trump started his second term with the highest approval ratings of his political career, but the past year has revealed a markedly different approach to the presidency.

The bombast is still there, along with the insatiable need for flattery and adulation. But Trump version two seems increasingly detached from the base that returned him to office on a promise of lower prices, better paid jobs, and an America where ordinary people could access decent health care, affordable housing, and lower energy and food bills.

He has alienated allies abroad and the coalition of young, Hispanic, and independent voters who cemented his 2024 victory. 

His inner authoritarian has been unleashed — courtesy in part of a Supreme Court ruling that decreed that a US president can do what he wants with impunity — and is enabled by a coterie of incompetents and sycophants.

His newly-piqued passion for imperialist adventures is not shared by his base, who would far sooner he focus on grocery prices than annexing Greenland or bombing Iran.

Immigration control, once Trump’s strongest suit a year ago, has become a liability. It’s one sign that the 79-year-old president, who has shown signs of cognitive and physical decline over the past year, has lost touch with his base.

The mass rallies that once invigorated him now seem to drain him; they’re fewer in number and smaller in size. Most of his time is spent hobnobbing with billionaires in the White House and at Mar-A-Lago.

Meanwhile, his insistence that America is “winning at everything” strikes a discordant note with an increasing number of voters who see scant evidence that they’ve “never had it so good”.

Fracturing alliances

Congressional Republicans fearful of losing their seats in November are moving from anxiety to exasperation.

“I don’t know who he’s listening to,” a senior aide to GOP senator Thom Tillis quipped. “It must be the guys in the buffet line at Mar-A-Lago.”

Economists and Democrats talk incessantly about the K-shaped economy, where the wealthiest 10% of Americans are becoming wealthier while the remaining 90% whose earnings have remained stagnant, or are either stagnant or less able to afford the basic cost of living than they could during the Biden administration.

Marjorie Taylor Greene — one of Trump’s fiercest defenders before she resigned from Congress amid a bitter fallout over the Epstein files and Trump’s focus on foreign adventurism — was the canary in the Maga coal mine, the first voice of dissent from his fiercely loyal base.

Donald Trump took a substantial hit to his term recently as the Supreme Court rebuked his planned tariffs. Picture: Kenny Holston/The New York Times via AP

Now, fearful of being swept from office in a tsunami of anti-Trump sentiment, prominent Congressional Republicans like Senate majority leader John Thune, and senators Rand Paul and John Curtis, are rediscovering their vertebrae, by applauding last week’s Supreme Court ruling, which struck down Trump’s tariffs as unlawful. 

The Supreme Court’s rebuke is the biggest humiliation for Trump thus far.

Republican hopes

However, it would be premature to write off Trump at this point. Congressional Democrats have largely failed to exploit the growing disenchantment with Trump, largely because of an ineffectual leadership that has yet to persuade voters that they offer a better alternative. 

Several things may happen between now and November that could help minimise GOP mid-term losses.

If Trump, the master showman, succeeds in delivering a spectacle that all Americans can enjoy to mark the celebration of the US’ 250th anniversary of Independence Day on July 4, it will boost the feel-good factor among Americans. Republicans are the natural beneficiaries of a surge in patriotism — and no one is more adroit at wrapping himself in the American flag than Trump.

As a result of Trump’s $4 trillion (€3.38tn) tax cut legislation, the majority of American households — those earning between $69,000 and $119,000 — are expected to save up to $2,000 (€1,692) in federal income taxes this year. 

While it’s a negligible sum compared to the estimated $8bn tax cut Jeff Bezos will enjoy, it may help offset anger over the failure of Trump’s promised $2,000 per household tariffs cheque to materialise.

It’s also likely that conservative justice Samuel Alito will announce his retirement shortly, giving Trump the opportunity to appoint another hardliner to the bench. More than anything else, the stacking of the court with right-wing ideologues animates and delights Trump’s base.

There are increasing signs that the 67-year-old communist regime in Cuba is on the brink of collapse, partly as a result of Trump’s capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and the imposition of a near-total oil blockade that has shut down the country’s major infrastructures and triggered a humanitarian crisis.

 If Trump can claim credit for felling communism in America’s backyard, it would be a feather in his cap.

Democrats acknowledge that a GOP uprising is unlikely. Trump’s hardcore Maga base may stay home in the mid-terms — which have a traditionally low turnout — but they’re unlikely to vote Democrat under any circumstance. 

However, the coalition of Hispanics, younger voters, and independents that secured is 2024 victory is more likely to abandon the listing Maga ship and a leader who seems to be losing his capacity to excite and inspire his base, even as his capacity for self-enrichment and self-aggrandisement remains intact.