(CNN) — When President Donald Trump took the political world by storm in 2016, his rise was often described as a “populist” one. And he certainly played the part of a renegade challenging a broken political system on behalf of regular Americans.
Ten years later, though, Trump has almost completely abandoned this brand of politics.
Indeed, in many ways, he has become the anti-populist.
And he’s got the poll numbers to prove it.
Polling this month from Reuters and Ipsos has shown Trump’s approval rating dropping to a record low of 33%. That’s just 1 in 3 Americans who endorse his job performance.
But perhaps more telling is the still-falling percentage who “strongly” approve of him. It’s been dropping for a while now. And in the newest poll, it’s at just 13% of all Americans and 35% of Republicans.
That’s roughly 1 in 8 Americans who think what Trump is doing is great — a remarkably small number of truly devoted supporters. And despite the president’s supposed hammerlock on his base, nearly two-thirds of Republicans are less than enthused.
So how does a president get to that point?
For Trump, it’s by almost totally disregarding public opinion in favor of his own whims, desires and even personal enrichment and glorification — a propensity he seems inclined to continue even during the stretch run of the midterms, when many politicians are highly sensitive to what plays well with voters.
Trump’s threatened 50% tariffs on Canada are a case in point.
A CNN poll this spring showed 65% of Americans said Trump’s tariffs had a negative impact on their personal finances. And even when the tariffs as a whole weren’t as unpopular last year, his initial Canada levies were still very unpopular; between 60% and 64% of Americans opposed them from the outset.
So what does Trump do 70 days before the midterms? Embrace a trade war with Canada, naturally.
Trump on Tuesday even threatened to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America as part of the feud — echoing his purported renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. Around two-thirds of Americans also opposed the latter change.
Vice President JD Vance got in on the act Monday by mislabeling Canada as a “state” and calling it a “Freudian slip” — evoking Trump’s threats to make Canada the 51st state. And why not? A Marquette University Law School poll last year, after all, showed 75% of Americans opposed this idea.
Trump’s recent positive comments about data centers are also perplexing for a supposed populist.
There is perhaps no more clear-cut populist issue right now than opposing data centers. As many as 7 in 10 Americans oppose having them in their communities, largely perceiving the centers as something powerful tech companies are inflicting upon them.
But even as his fellow Republicans turn sharply against them, Trump is embracing them. He’s calling data centers “big, strong, bold, and Money Machines” and “Cash Cows.” He said communities should welcome them and praised their architecture as the “most incredible buildings I’ve ever seen.” He’s even criticized Republicans for supporting moratoriums that ban data center development.
But these are hardly the only examples of Trump’s anti-populism:
- Polls show 6 in 10 Americans say Trump has “gone too far” in changing institutions like the Kennedy Center, and just 9% of Americans think it’s appropriate to name government buildings after Trump while he’s still president. Yet Trump is again trying to slap his name on the Kennedy Center.
- He continues to focus extensively on his renovations of DC — often parading them for the cameras like he did with the new White House helipad Monday. This despite a Washington Post poll last month showing Americans viewed these kinds of projects negatively by a 2-to-1 margin.
- The Iran war was clearly not what Americans wanted from the start; they opposed intervention by 2-to-1 margins in prewar polls. And Trump’s supposed anti-war streak was core to his populism. Yet six months after launching the war, Trump is now threatening to extend the conflict through the midterms.
- He’s continued his factually deprived assault on vaccines this month, even as KFF polling shows 6 in 10 Americans oppose the administration’s handling of the issue.
- Trump until a few weeks ago seemingly wouldn’t let go of his $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, which the White House has said could send money to violent January 6, 2021, defendants. This despite a poll last year showing 83% of Americans opposed Trump decision to pardon those people — much less paying them.
The problem with most of those examples isn’t just that Trump is focused on his unpopular pet projects. It’s that he’s focused on them to the exclusion of and often at the expense of what people really want, which is a laser focus on affordability and economic issues.
He instead repeatedly talks about how we’re in an economic “golden age,” even though just 4% of Americans in the new Reuters-Ipsos poll said the economy was “very strong.”
And people have noticed, with polls showing overwhelming majorities believe that he’s neglecting the most important issues like inflation.
It all begs the question: What do voters do when a president basically casts off even the veneer of interest in doing what the people want — and instead does a series of things he wants that even large segments of his base appear uncomfortable with?
It sets up a pretty remarkable test of partisanship in the 2026 midterms.
The-CNN-Wire
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