U.S. President Donald Trump at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in Michigan, January 13, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
With the 2026 midterms nine and one-half months away, Democratic strategists are looking at President Donald Trump's weak approval ratings in a long list of polls and hoping that the midterms will become a referendum on his presidency. A New York Times/Siena College poll conducted January 12-17 found his approval at 40 percent, but only 32 percent of respondents believe the U.S. is "better off than it was a year ago." Meanwhile, a YouGov/Economist poll released on January 20 found that only 37 percent of Americans approve of Trump's job performance either "strongly" or "somewhat."
Trump often dismisses negative poll numbers as "fake news." And according to MS NOW columnist Steve Benen — a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show" — another response is filing lawsuits.
In a column published on January 23, Benen describes a pattern with Trump: filing frivolous lawsuits after seeing poll numbers he doesn't like.
"Once in a while, when the president is especially frustrated by Americans' attitudes, he reaches out to his lawyers," Benen observes. "In June 2020, for example, during Trump's reelection bid, his operation sent a cease-and-desist letter to the president of CNN, demanding that the network retract and apologize for a poll that showed him trailing Joe Biden — who, roughly four months later, defeated the Republican incumbent. CNN ignored the demand, and Trump failed to follow through on his threat to sue."
The Maddow producer/MS NOW columnist continues, "Four years later, after winning a second term, Trump filed an unprecedented lawsuit against the Des Moines Register for publishing the results of a pre-election poll that he didn't like…. As 2026 gets underway, Trump is taking further steps down the same ridiculous path. After The New York Times published the results of its latest national poll, which also showed horrible results for the White House, the president published a tirade to his social media platform."
In that January 22 post on his Truth Social platform, Trump referenced a "lawsuit against The Failing New York Times" that he filed — threatening, "They have to pay a price for FAKE AND FRAUDULENT NEWS and, hopefully, in the not too distant future, they will!"
"In a normal and healthy political environment," Benen comments, "American presidents struggling with sinking public support, especially in their second term, have options: They can predict a future turnaround. They can argue that they don’t consider public opinion research to be especially important, since they can’t run for a third term anyway. They might even adopt a longer view and insist that they expect history to vindicate them. They might even consider changing course and moving away from the policies that are dragging down their popularity. In 2026, however, Americans are not living in a normal and healthy political environment."
Steve Benen's full MS NOW column is available at this link.