President Donald Trump’s approval ratings continue to plummet — and a comprehensive survey of 2,300 people describing him in phrases like “Gestapo style” sheds light on why.
The survey, taken by The Washington Post, showed that Americans focused on Trump’s immigration policies more than anything else when galvanizing either for or against him. Overall 39 percent of respondents supported Trump while 60 percent opposed him. Americans also overwhelmingly disapprove of Trump’s immigration policies, with 57 percent of those who disapprove of him citing them as the worst thing he has done as president. Trump’s handling of the economy came in second with that group at 33 percent, with most individuals within that group citing his tariffs (29 percent) as the reason why.
By contrast, “among supporters, 83 percent who identify as ‘very conservative’ and 85 percent who are ‘somewhat conservative’ mentioned immigration policy as one of the best things he has done, compared with 66 percent of moderate Trump supporters,” the Post wrote. “Similarly, 71 percent of Trump opponents who identify as ‘very liberal’ cited immigration, compared with 63 percent who are somewhat liberal and 52 percent of moderates.
Among the respondents who opposed Trump, they criticized him for things like “detaining and deporting immigrants with no criminal background,” giving “ICE all the power they have,” engaging in “Gestapo style of deporting illegal immigrants... even killing at least two U.S. citizens. We are a ‘nation of immigrants’” and “everything with ICE, deporting immigrants, etc.” Trump supporters characterized these same policies as positives, praising Trump for “attempting to regain control of our borders and the benefits of citizenship,” “deporting alien criminals and people who entered America illegally” and “closing the border and deporting dangerous criminals here illegally.”
Anticipating Trump’s State of the Union Address, conservative columnist William Kristol analyzed the poll numbers by arguing “Trump has lost about one sixth of his approval in the last year. A new poll from CNN is even more dramatic, showing Trump at 36 percent approval today, down from 48 percent in that same poll a year ago. That suggests one in four of his original supporters deserting him. … So Trump has lost considerable ground.”
He added, “Tonight Trump will, as Steve Bannon memorably put it, ‘flood the zone with s——.’ The good news is that the American people seem increasingly sickened by the odor. But we have a long struggle ahead to get rid of it.”
Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi recently had a similar observation.
“Not only does it mean he has a lower floor, what it means is these declining numbers suggest for the first time ever, it's now eating into his MAGA base,” Amandi told The New Republic. “These numbers that you're seeing drop on the economy. Yeah. That’s MAGA voters saying, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa, you promised prices are going to go down on day one. You're going to do all these things on day one. And it's now more than a year into the presidency.’ That's why I think he’s in a spiral of irrelevancy as a lame duck-ness that's not going to go away.”
He added, “[The economy] was the only reason he was reelected, and it's not going to come back unless there is a massive turnaround in the economy over the next couple of months. And I just don't see that happening.”