President Donald Trump at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland on February 22, 2025 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
Political pundits use the term "honeymoon period" to describe the good will that U.S. presidents typically enjoy when they enter the White House. "Honeymoon periods" don't last: Presidents Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton all suffered major "shellackings" (to use Obama's word) in the midterms before enjoying strong reelection victories.
The "honeymoon period" for President Donald Trump's second term, according to many polls, ended quickly. And his approval ratings are tanking.
In an opinion column published on May 2, The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland argues that Trump has a fundamental problem: He is much better at angry performance art than he is at governing. The Guardian's headline says of Trump, "He Can Rage, But He Can't Govern."
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"A slew of polls appeared this week, but they all told the same story: that Trump’s approval ratings have collapsed, falling to the lowest level for a newly installed president in the post-War era," Freedland observes. "He has now edged ahead of his only rival for that title: himself. The previous low watermark for a president three months in was set by one Donald Trump in 2017."
Freedland continues, "Back then, 42 percent of Americans approved of the way Trump was doing his job. The latest Ipsos survey for the Washington Post/ABC News has Trump at just 39 percent. This, remember, is meant to be the honeymoon period, yet Trump is 10 points behind where Joe Biden stood at this point, 30 points behind Barack Obama and 44 points behind Ronald Reagan. Remember: U.S. presidents tend to get less, not more, popular as time goes on."
Trump still knows how to fire up a crowd at a rally, but those events tend to attract his hardcore MAGA base — not the type of swing voters and independents who went for Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024.
"Perhaps most significant is that Trump is weak even in those areas where he's meant to be strong," Freedland comments, noting that Trump is polling badly when it comes to the economy and immigration."
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"Of course, none of this should be a surprise," Freedland comments. "Trump's conman promises and delusional dreams of turning the clock back were always bound to fail. This is the nature of nationalist populism, whether it wears a red cap in Michigan or a turquoise rosette in Runcorn. It is expert at turning grievance, division and nostalgia into votes. But when it comes to governing, it will always fail. It offers an outlet for complaint — and has no answers at all."
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Jonathan Freedland's full column for The Guardian is available at this link.
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