How low can President Donald Trump go?
One answer is his Thanksgiving Day social media screed, trashing America as “divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at,” because of the immigration policies of leaders like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, whom he called “seriously retarded.” (This was after two National Guardsmen were shot, one fatally, by an Afghan refugee in an ambush attack near the White House.)
Another is “quiet, Piggy,” the derogatory insult Trump directed at a Bloomberg White House correspondent after she questioned him about what he knew about Jeffrey Epstein, just one of the many slights Trump has recently hurled at women who ask him tough questions.
And there was Trump’s suggestion that execution could be a punishment for six Democratic senators who reminded military members that they must refuse unlawful orders.
“This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???” Trump wrote in a post. “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” (Unsurprisingly, death threats against the lawmakers increased after Trump’s rant.)
And yet another answer to the depths Trump will sink to is 36%, Trump’s approval rating according to Gallup, the lowest of his second term. Some 60% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of his job, a 12-point increase since he was sworn in for a second term.
Americans have long seen anger and attitude from Trump. What’s different now is that the politician who could once detect and shape the public zeitgeist now appears out of touch — cloistered, flanked by the elite and motivated by naked self-interest. And for the GOP, Trump’s second-term preoccupations — steering foreign policy, pardoning white-collar criminals, inflicting retribution on political opponents — have left them unmoored and mired in Trump’s mess.
All of this comes as Trump, the oldest American to be sworn in as president, faces increased scrutiny over his stamina. According to a recent story in The New York Times, Trump’s public appearances are truncated, his domestic travel is diminished, and he is frequently seen sitting behind a desk at the White House. This is a shift from his first term and his whirling dervish campaign style, where raucous rallies took him all over the country.
“One of the worst mistakes you can ever make is over promise and under deliver,” Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X.
A CBS News/YouGov poll from November captures just how out of sync Trump is with the electorate.
On prices and inflation, 60% of Americans say that Trump makes things sound better than they are. Among those who judge him mostly on the economy, 77% believe that Trump is not spending enough time on the issue. The same poll shows majorities of all ages and races disapprove of Trump’s job performance, with his highest disapprovals coming from voters under 45, people of color and women. Calling reporters names, denouncing Democrats and painting a picture of a dystopian America is unlikely to win any of them back.
More broadly, Trump’s debasement has implications for his party, a group of politicians who gave their loyalty and power to Trump, but now find themselves with little to run on.
In a Tennessee district that Trump won by 22 points just a year ago, the GOP hasn’t run a single ad that mentions Trump or the importance of electing someone to help advance his agenda. This is because Trump’s agenda is … what exactly? It will be an uphill battle for a Democrat to win this seat, but Trump made the race seem more competitive because of his distracted, chaotic approach to his job.
His disruptive sensibility was supposed to be in the service of bettering the lives of average Americans, who felt locked out and left behind. Now, he is walled off and cocooned by his own grievances. Monday night between 7pm and midnight, Trump posted over 160 times to Truth Social, his social media platform, attacking his Democratic opponents and re-posting conspiracy theorists and AI-generated content. He ended a cabinet meeting on Tuesday with calling Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and her friends “garbage.”
It is, unfortunately, unrealistic to expect that Trump will spend less time attacking Democrats and rehashing all the ways he thinks he has been wronged. But his poll numbers, his party and the country would all be better off if he did.