President Reagan's Radio Address to the Nation on Tarrifs, 1987
youtube.com
youtube.com
https://ourfakehistory.com/index.php/season-ten/episode-232-...
https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-sil... shows me that, while a lot of people strongly disapprove of Trump, he retains a very strong base of over 40% of likely voters. And his overall approval rating is pretty typical for a US President at this point in their term.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/23/economy/trump-argentina-beef-...
He won last election on a fragile coalition which doesn’t exist anymore today. So, if elections are held today, he’d not only lose but will also get buried deep down.
Given the way that all media (across the spectrum) have been slipping, I will not take any story based on anecdote as indicative of anything other than the biases of the one selecting the anecdotes. Give me a poll. And the polling shows that his base is strong.
> But Trump carried rural counties by 93%.
We are talking about the present time, and you are stuck in the past!! Anyway, the actual number is much lower than that.
You are just looking for a selective validation; it doesn't matter to you if that's a poll or a story. Just the same as that Clown in the WH.
For the record, here are my biases. I hate Trump. I think that he's a threat to democracy, and I wish that red America would wake up and reject him. But I'm painfully aware that the world doesn't work like I would wish. And so I'll look for what I judge to be most accurate. And not for what I want.
You claim that the actual number of rural counties carried by Trump is much lower than the 93% that I said. But my 93% comes from your article. Do you have a reference that disagrees with your own article? If not, then you are insisting on facts that are not in evidence.
You also reject my bringing up that figure as being stuck in the past. But I didn't just stick in the past. I brought in current polls. Polls of his base, which truly do dominate rural counties, show that his support is holding strong. Certainly his support is holding strong among the rural people that I know through my family.
But let's be more specific. According to https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-approval-rating-rural-... last month, Trump's rating has slumped in rural counties from an overall approval of +22% down to +14%. Which means that some minds changed, but a random person from a rural county has probably not turned on Trump. Which is the opposite of your original claim.
Next up, the article brings up various groups that dislike this decision or that which Trump has made. But it is extremely common for us to dislike some decision that a political leader makes while continuing to support them overall. Registering specific unhappiness does *NOT* mean a change in popular support. It just means that there is specific unhappiness.
In fact the single decision that Trump made which caused the most specific unhappiness in his base is the choice to not release the Jeffry Epstein files. From https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/most-americans-want-th..., about 2/3 of Republicans want them released. But despite most of Trump's base disliking that decision, polling says that they are part of his base.
And no, I'm not looking for selective validation. I'm simply reading the news in a critical fashion. Per https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/left/cnn-bias/, CNN has a left-wing bias, and is only "mostly factual". What that means in practice is that they put a spin on stories that will appeal to left-wing audiences. Left-wing audiences want to believe that Trump's base is turning against him. That's the spin in the article.
But the article offered no fact which would lead me to believe that. And if you want to find out whether people have turned against Trump, the most reliable way to do so is to ask them. "Did you vote for Trump? Would you support Trump now?" Which is *EXACTLY* what a poll does.
My preference for polls is not a preference for the version I want to hear. It is a preference for the best kind of data asking the question that I want answered.
* https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/presidential... * https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-lowest-100-day-approva...
Now that was 100 days, but we are 278 days into his second term now. The polls went down further and polls on issues he should have addressed are not going up.
For a better view of what's normal and compared with presidency of the past:
* https://news.gallup.com/interactives/507569/presidential-job...
The first 6 months are usually a honey moon period. The full effect of Trump's policies are still to be felt, and with the current political / economic / legal / etc.. context, the approval ratings won't go up.
But indeed, his core is difficult to move. My opinion on what follows, but I think they attached too much of their identity to the guy and their coping mechanism will be studied for decades to come in political, psychology and history classes.
There are many different pollsters, each of which has slightly different numbers. Here are Nate Silver's average of the polls giving approval for historical presidents at this point in their office who were then polling below 50%. (Obama, at 51.8% just missed the cutoff.)
45.8% Bill Clinton
43.7% Trump (current term)
43.6% Joe Biden
39.1% Gerald Ford
38.0% Trump (first term)
So really, despite how mad so many people are, his popularity is not that low by historical standards.
I think we can. This tells his popularity is not as strong as what the claim is. We are in a presence of a significant vocal minority. I will grant that his core base is hard to move, including the farmers who are going bankrupt and harmed by his own policies, and many will rationalize it. As Twain's quote go: "It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled". Especially when voters are voting based on identity.
Equally, he could do a lot worse than his current numbers and they are not that catastrophic, granted. Comparing to Clinton who did bad in his early 1st term isn't great (for a myriad of scandals that are quite pale compared to recent times), or Biden inheriting a bad economy with a pandemic, while Trump inherited a boosting economy in his first term, and a recovering one for his second. Hence his numbers should be so much better.
Some key metrics to focus is the independants support/approval that he lost in majority, and certain pro maga communities such as the latinos who's families are directly affected. Farmers, who knows how much will swing and wake up after losing it all, but some did already. A trend might start with the economic dominoes slowly dropping.
Overall, I don't think he has normal polling numbers given the context. But we are not in normal times.
What can Trump do? Get mad? That will drive the politician who does this to prominence! Surely someone wants to get their name out on the national stage? And while it costs money to start, I'm sure that lots will want to donate if they see Trump getting unhappy with it!
And it's a strategy that can be repeated over and over again until Trump learns to stop trying to use threats to censor free speech. Which hopefully takes a while.
People who are still Trump supporters now cannot be convinced by logic.
It is to make independents start to question, and create support nationwide among Democrats who like to see Trump squawk. Thereby propelling the politician behind these ads to more prominence in the Democratic party.
sure is great living in interesting times, eh?