Half a year into his second presidency, Donald Trump continues to be generally popular among his hardcore MAGA base but is polling badly among Americans on the whole. A CBS News poll found Trump's approval rating at 42 percent, and an Economist/YouGov poll conducted July 18-21 showed Trump with 43 percent approval.
Axios' Jim VandeHei discussed Trump's weak approval ratings during a Thursday, July 24 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," arguing that Trump is angry and bitter because he thinks he is doing a great job but feels unappreciated.
VandeHei told "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough, his colleagues Ali Vitali and Jonathan Lemire and conservative New York Times columnist David French, "If you just look at the scoreboard in terms of things that he wanted to do, right? Getting that bill, that tax cut bill, that spending bill done on a on a certain deadline, the Iranian strikes, what he's done on deportations — by what he wanted to do, he had a hell of a six months. But then you look at the polls, and people don't like what he's doing on almost any topic — even immigration, which everyone thought was a sure-bet political winner for Republicans."
READ MORE:'Deal with it': Top Senate Republican gives Mike Johnson an ultimatum over Epstein scandal
The Axios reporter continued, "It's turning out that the American people were like, 'Yes, we want the border locked down. We don't want people who've committed crimes here, but I don't want my neighbor who's been here 20 years — who goes to my church, whose kids play with my kids — getting locked up or getting deported. Or I don't want U.S. citizens accidentally getting swept up in a raid and sitting in jail and having to defend themselves and fight for their own freedom.' And you see that on topic after topic."
VandeHei went on to argue that Trump is "in a very sour mood" because he thinks he's "crushing it" yet "no one seems to like it — and even my own base doesn't like it."
Host Scarborough, a Never Trump conservative and former GOP congressman, also had a lot to say during the segment.
Scarborough told the panelists, "In some ways, the president loses by winning in that I think a lot of Americans agree with him generally on whether it's sanity at the border — I mean, having a border that actually is a border. That's a bit of a change over the past couple of years; it started going in that direction in the last year or so of the Biden Administration, but it really now is a secure southern border. I think a lot of Americans support that. And I will say a lot of Americans generally support many of the president's policies. It comes down to the execution of it. How is the (Trump) Administration executing these policies?"
READ MORE: 'They pulled it': Republican takes credit for derailing confirmation of Trump Cabinet pick
Watch the full video below or at this link.