MAGA’s Theory of Trump’s Dismal Approval Ratings – John McCormack

Trump’s approval rating, which remains mired in the low 40s, is in one sense unremarkable: American voters frequently sour on a sitting president and his party in midterm elections. But according to Trump and his base of supporters, of course, he is supposed to be different. Trump “alone can fix it,” and his second term was supposed to be free of the political pitfalls of his first term because he would be rid of the establishment Republicans—such as former chief of staff John Kelly and congressional leaders Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell—who had once (somewhat) restrained the president. 

This time around, Trump’s full populism has been unleashed with the help of yes-men throughout the administration and on Capitol Hill. “There is this idea that people have that I think was very common in the first administration … that their objective was to control the president or influence the president, or even manipulate the president because they had to in order to serve the national interest,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a Vanity Fair article published last month. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Rubio continued, “just takes the diametrically opposite viewpoint, which is that she’s a facilitator, that the American people have elected Donald Trump. And her job is to actually facilitate his vision and to make his vision come to life.” 

Yet the political result of Trump’s full populism in his second term appears to be largely the same as the political results of his first term: a president with an underwater approval rating and a drubbing in the off-year elections that portends a blue wave in the midterm elections.

So how exactly do congressional Republicans answer Trump’s question about why he and Republicans aren’t more popular in the mind of the public? Some Republicans contend the problem is simply one of messaging, while others claim the party needs to be even more populist. While polling shows Trump and the GOP faring poorly on the economy and affordability, few elected Republicans are willing to argue that Trump’s tariffs—at their highest level since the 1930s—are a source of the GOP’s political woes.

The core tenet of today’s Republican Party is that Trump cannot fail; he can only be failed. And according to Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley, congressional Republicans have failed Trump by not fully implementing a populist agenda. 

“I’m not a political prognosticator or pollster,” Hawley told The Dispatch in December, declining to directly offer an explanation of Trump’s approval ratings. But, Hawley added, “in order to enact that [populist] agenda fully, you’ve got to have a Congress that wants to go along … If I were [Trump], I’d be very frustrated by [Congress].” While Hawley praised the reconciliation bill Congress passed last year for enacting “no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime,” he faulted the GOP for not raising the minimum wage to $15, passing the bill he’s sponsored with Democratic Vermont Sen. Peter Welch to cap the cost of prescription drugs, capping credit card interest rates, or making all health care expenses tax deductible.

Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, a less populist member of the MAGA coalition, told The Dispatch the GOP’s political problems largely stemmed from messaging. Trump is “enormously more effective the second term. What we’ve gotten accomplished is breathtaking,” Cruz said in recent conversations with The Dispatch. He pointed to the administration’s success in shutting down illegal border crossings and provisions in the GOP’s catchall reconciliation bill, such as tax cuts, border security, school choice, and “Trump accounts” that deposit $1,000 in an investment account for newborns (the latter two provisions were written by Cruz). 

“The cost of gas is down anywhere from $1 to $2 a gallon from where it was a year ago,” Cruz said. “We have won historic victories this year, but I think collectively, Republicans do need to do a better job communicating. I think many of the voters aren’t aware of the victories.” Asked twice on Wednesday if tariffs were hurting the GOP politically, Cruz sidestepped the question. “Tariffs are a longer conversation,” he said as he stepped into an elevator.

With the issues of the economy and cost of living top of mind for voters, Trump’s tariff policy certainly looks like the GOP’s biggest self-inflicted wound. Tariff revenue has jumped to about $30 billion per month under Trump’s second term—up from about $6 billion per month in 2024. In other words, Trump’s tariffs translate to a nearly $300 billion a year—$3 trillion a decade—tax increase paid by American consumers and businesses. A Marist/PBS poll in December found that only 36 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s handling of the economy. According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans satisfied with the direction of the economy has declined by 14 percentage points since Trump’s tariffs took effect last spring. A YouGov poll from November found that 73 percent of Americans said Trump’s tariffs had increased prices they’ve paid. 

Yet, the congressional GOP is largely still singing the praises of Trump’s tariff policy. “I’m very supportive of the president’s agenda when it comes to tariffs—renegotiating our trade deals and making sure we’re not getting ripped off by foreign countries,” Arizona GOP Rep. Eli Crane, a member of the staunchly MAGA House Freedom Caucus, told The Dispatch. “There was no way to change the system that we had without some pain points for certain industries. But on the whole, I think it was a very good move.” Asked what explains Trump’s underwater approval ratings, Crane said: “I’m not a pollster, it’s not my field. But like I said, I agree with the policy.”

Texas GOP Rep. Chip Roy, another member of the Freedom Caucus, told The Dispatch: “Affordability is getting crushed by disastrous health care [policy] that Democrats created and by housing costs have been going up both because of regulatory issues and, frankly, a whole lot of meddling—institutional buyers, foreign buyers.” So is Trump’s tariff policy hurting the GOP politically? “It’d be hard to blame tariffs on where we stand now,” Roy said, because tariff policy is about “resetting the landscape so that we can have strong American jobs and so forth.” 

Texas GOP Rep. Jake Ellzey said that tariff policy hadn’t hurt the GOP and predicted the economy would recover as the congressional GOP’s reconciliation legislation takes effect. “When Reagan took over, it took a couple of years for the economy to rebound, and it did,” Ellzey told The Dispatch. “The fears of the tariff and what it would do—none of those materialized. So it’s a negotiating point for the president that a lot of folks said wouldn’t work, and it has.”

Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman told The Dispatch that while she thinks tariffs have had a positive impact on the economy, “I think there’s been a lot of misinformation about [tariffs], and I think that the mainstream press especially has been trying to find anything that they can to undermine President Trump.”

California Rep. Kevin Kiley is a rare voice in the Republican Party willing to be somewhat critical of Trump’s tariffs. “Obviously the affordability issue is centrally important, and the cost of living continues to be far too high and far too many people,” Kiley told The Dispatch. While he blamed state policy for high taxes, energy and house prices in California, he said that tariffs were one of the “areas where we do need to kind of reassert ourselves.”

While there is a decent chance the Supreme Court may strike down some of the president’s tariff authority in a case that could be decided as soon as today, there’s still no sign that the congressional GOP is ready to defy a president who insisted in his speech to House Republicans on Tuesday: “We got rich because of tariffs.”