Backlash: Top Trump pollster drops the hammer on Republicans

24 February

U.S. President Donald Trump attends a Republican Governors Association dinner at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 20, 2025.

At the annual Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump told his Republican supporters that, having overseen the firing of roughly 30,000 federal employees and backed proposals to slash the Medicaid and Medicare programs that millions of Americans across the political spectrum rely on, he has "not yet begun to fight."

But his promise came as Republican lawmakers across the country faced the wrath of voters over the Trump agenda and the president's own pollster warned that moving forward with GOP plans to hand out $4.5 trillion in tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy—an endeavor that would require cutting crucial public programs—will be perilous for the party.

As Common Dreams reported on Friday, Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) was asked at a town hall this week why the firing of federal employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been so "radical and extremist," and with federal lawmakers back in their districts this weekend for their first recess of Trump's second term, McCormick wasn't alone in hearing from angry voters.

Right-wing commentator Erick Erickson claimed McCormick's experience was an anomaly and the result of Democrats mobilizing their voters, but Leah Greenberg, co-founder of the progressive advocacy group Indivisible, asked him to explain "why there have also been furious crowds" in several other states since the congressional recess began.

The New York Times reported that in his solidly Republican district in East Texas, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) heard from voters from both sides of the aisle who wanted his guarantee that the GOP will not make cuts to the social safety net.

"When are you going to wrest control back from the executive and stop hurting your constituents?" asked one woman.

Trump has pushed forward a plan to circumvent congressional power since taking office, issuing executive orders to roll back regulations that only Congress has the authority to undo and attempting to freeze federal funding that has already been appropriated.

Rep. Nick Begich (R-Alaska), who told constituents he is a member of the "DOGE caucus," referring to the Trump-created Department of Government Efficiency that's led by tech mogul Elon Musk, faced a similar question from a voter who described himself as a "lifelong Republican."

"I am in the majority, I think, with a lot of Americans, a lot of Alaskans, that are really concerned that we have an executive branch that is more than willing to push or remove the guardrails that are on the executive branch, and what we need from Congress and from the courts is to play that checks and balances role," said the voter.

In Oklahoma, a Republican voter asked Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.) in a telephone town hall Friday how DOGE, "with some college whiz kids from a computer terminal in Washington, D.C., without even getting into the field, after about a week or maybe two, have determined that it's OK to cut veterans' benefits?"

Another registered Republican told Bice that only a month into Trump's second term, "this administration has gone absolutely off the tracks long ago."

Rep. Cliff Bentz, the only Republican member of Oregon's congressional delegation, was confronted at a town hall on Wednesday by a woman who condemned the administration for firing federal workers "on the spot for performance when we all know how hard these people work"—an apparent reference to the mass firing of probationary workers who have been on the job for less than a year.

The New Republic columnist Greg Sargent mused Sunday that DOGE is starting to resemble former President George W. Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina, "with mounting public concerns about the human toll of the administration's malevolence and incompetence."

The apparent backlash comes as House Republicans prepare to vote on a budget plan including cuts to Medicaid and food assistance—a proposal GOP members who narrowly won their seats in November have expressed major concerns about voting for. With voters in swing districts as well as solidly red areas expressing discontent with the early weeks of the Trump administration, Republican lawmakers' continued support for massive cuts in public spending could wipe out the party's narrow majority in the House in the 2026 elections.

Tony Fabrizio, who was the president's top pollster on his 2024 campaign, warned in a recent memo that majorities of voters in competitive Republican districts are "worried about their personal financial situation," and Trump's approval in those districts is at 47%.

Sixty-three percent of respondents told Fabrizio that tax policy should support working families, and 80% said they support extending the Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies that expire this year.

"Extending these subsidies will collide with the bedrock GOP ideological commitment to policies that take from poor and working people to keep taxes low on rich people and corporations," wrote Sargent at The New Republic on Saturday. "Trump and Republicans will again want to advance those broad priorities, but they've also been shown repeatedly to be a big political loser. We now have this straight from Trump's own pollster, who is effectively warning them off of doing exactly that. But as should be overwhelmingly clear by now, they are very much poised not to listen."

As Republican lawmakers faced questions from angry voters about DOGE's seizure of confidential government data and cuts to federal agencies overseeing healthcare research, education, workers' rights, and other operations impacting ordinary Americans' lives, Trump said Saturday in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he would like to Musk "get even more aggressive."

Musk appeared to respond to the demand by sending an email to federal employees through the Office of Personnel Management, asking them to provide five examples of work they completed last week and warning that a failure to respond by Monday at midnight would be understood as a resignation.

That email was followed by directives from the State Department and the FBI asking employees not to respond to Musk's demand.

As outlets including the Times and The Washington Post reported that DOGE's so-called "Wall of Receipts"—purported to show $55 billion in savings as the advisory body slashes government agencies and contracts—actually shows hundreds of contracts that were already complete and didn't result in any money going back to the federal government, Sargent wrote that the department is turning into a "fiasco for Elon Musk on multiple fronts."

Musk's latest email to federal workers, said Sargent, "should be seen as a sad little stunt, a desperate effort to make DOGE appear focused and effective when one revelation after another is revealing that it's a fiasco, a comedy of errors, an absolute joke."

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